


A Silly Teenage Love Story

by MarInk



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, High School, Long One-Shot, M/M, Unrequited Love, a hefty dose of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-12
Updated: 2016-07-12
Packaged: 2018-07-23 14:10:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 51,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7466340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarInk/pseuds/MarInk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur is a student at Camelot High and his father is the Headmaster. All teachers know that and treat Arthur accordingly. Enter Mr. Emrys, the teacher of English literature who just refuses to understand how things work around here. Nothing is left for Arthur but to try and get him kicked out of the job and, subsequently, Arthur's life. Arthur tries. God knows, he really tries.</p><p>This was written for a prompt at merlin kinkmeme back in 2012 under the working title of "First Time For Everything" and only finished now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Silly Teenage Love Story

There’s a C on his paper.

Arthur has never gotten a C in his life, and he doesn’t like this particular new experience. 

“Wow, dude,” says Leon, looking at the paper over his shoulder. “Mr. Emrys is a harsh one, isn’t he?”

“This is…” Arthur says slowly. He wants to say ‘outrageous’, but that wouldn’t express what he feels fully, so he chooses to let it hang.

“Seriously, though, how did you manage to do it? If I wasn’t seeing this paper with my own eyes right now, I’d think you wrote ‘fuck off, I don’t need no education’ instead of the essay. But there is actually some essay, isn’t there?”

“Fuck off,” Arthur says, for the lack of a wittier response.

After the class he approaches Mr. Emrys, and stands beside his desk while the latter collects his books and stuff strewn all over. 

“Arthur? You wanted something?”

Mr. Emrys smiles. His grin is wide and genuine, like he’s done nothing wrong, and his huge, baby-blue, naïve eyes are crinkling around the edges, and he looks younger than Arthur. And, obviously, stupider.

“I got a C for my last essay.”

“Ah, right, you did,” Mr. Emrys nods. “Your argumentation was lacking severely, and you didn’t keep up with the structure. However, you seem to like the topic, so next time, if you work a bit harder, you’ll be able to get a higher mark…”

“You don’t understand, Mr. Emrys.” Arthur is patient, explaining the obvious. He still gives Mr. Emrys the benefit of the doubt – he’s new at Camelot High, after all, he may not be really stupid, just ignorant about how the things are here. “I don’t get low marks.”

“Well, there’s the first time for everything?” Mr. Emrys offers it as a joke.

“No, you don’t get it.” Arthur sighs, feeling exasperated. “I don’t get low marks. Never. You see, my father is the Headmaster, and I’m used to being treated accordingly.”

The smile fades off Mr. Emrys’ face, and his look grows hard and disapproving.

“Let me guess: what you are saying is that all the other teachers give you high marks because you are the Headmaster’s son and therefore are privileged to preferential treatment no matter if you work hard enough or nor?”

“Exactly,” Arthur says. That’s the way it’s always been. He’s a Pendragon, he’s smart, talented, rich, beautiful and he can go on with the adjectives for awhile. It’s only fair that he’s entitled to being special if he doesn’t feel like burying his head in some nonsense he won’t need either for uni later or for his life in general. There are subjects which he excels at because he works for it and likes it, but English literature isn’t one of them and it will hardly ever be.

He’s run this string of arguments in his head many times, and it sounds really convincing and logical. It works on him, anyway, it should be working on anyone.

“Well,” says Mr. Emrys. “Sorry to disappoint you, Arthur, but if you want an A in my subject, you’ll have to work for it. No preferential treatment for you or for anyone.”

“You still don’t get it…” Arthur feels pretty irritated, because God knows he gave the man a chance to understand.

“Oh, I get it,” Mr. Emrys assures, and stands up, clutching his uneven pile of books to his chest. “I get that you’re a spoiled brat who expects everyone to bend for him, which is really sad to see in someone so young. I get that everyone is afraid of your father; he’s a rather intimidating man. But I say it again and won’t hesitate to repeat anytime you feel the need to come and ask for any kind of privilege: you want an A, you earn it. That’s the way it works. Have a good day, Arthur.”

With this, Mr. Emrys walks to the door. The sound of his footsteps is a little tuned out by the sound of blood boiling inside Arthur in anger.

“If you want a war, Mr. Emrys,” he shouts to the retreating back, helpless and beaten in some kind of fight he wasn’t aware he was taking part in, and desperately wanting to get the last word, “you’ll get one!”

Mr. Emrys turns back for a moment and gives Arthur what suspiciously reminds him of a pitying look. And goes.

Arthur breathes hard, trying to regain some of the calm confidence he usually displays at school. There’s humiliation and indignation churning like acid in his stomach. He feels sick.

Someone, Arthur thinks, someone needs to be shown their proper place.

* * *

He rarely visits his father at work, but today he skips lunch in favour of that.

“Hello, Headmaster.”

Arthur is never sure how to address his father when they are at school and face to face. This is one reason why he actually avoids such situations unless it’s urgent. 

Today is certainly urgent.

“Good afternoon, son.”

“Son” means Father is in good mood. Arthur likes the fact.

“I’d like to talk to you about that new teacher who replaced Mr. Gaius. Mr. Emrys.”

“Oh, Emrys,” Father nods in acknowledgement. “Excellent credentials, has some experience. It says on his CV that he worked for a year in a remand home? Twenty out of fifty of his delinquent students went to college after that year.”

“Oh, really?” says Arthur without enthusiasm. He isn’t here to discuss Mr. Emrys’ work experience, however admirable that is.

“Really,” Father says, not catching up on the sarcasm. Uther Pendragon doesn’t have sarcasm aimed at him all that often, and Arthur really should know better than try it. “Anyway, what about him?”

“He returned our latest essays this morning. I got a C.”

Arthur waits for a reaction, and he gets a hardened expression which is somehow a bit similar to what Mr. Emrys demonstrated earlier today.

“I don’t like slacking off, Arthur, you know that. Why did you get a C?”

Well, that’s not quite what Arthur expected.

“Erm, he said my argumentation was lacking and something about the structure, but it’s not the point, Father…”

“That’s exactly the point,” Father interrupts. “I don’t want to hear ever again of you getting low marks, Arthur, do you get it? I hope next time your argumentation will be better than that.”

“But…”

“This conversation is over. Go back to your classes and make an effort.”

Arthur goes without a single other word, his ears burning. He feels like there isn’t enough air to breathe and he has to stop in a quiet corridor in front of the chem lab where no one shows up at this hour.

His father is disappointed. He got a fucking C. He’s been humiliated twice today. His world is dangerously close to being overturned. And all of this is Mr. Emrys’ fault.

Arthur wishes fleetingly the man was just a cockroach, easy to step on.

While that – sadly – isn’t possible, Arthur will have to find another way to get him kicked out of Camelot High and Arthur’s life for good.

* * *

Deciding that he needs to come up with a plan is much easier than actually designing one. This is where Arthur is stuck, because while he is full of a passionate desire to have Mr. Emrys’ guts for garters, he isn’t sure how exactly he can achieve that.

It is evident now that he can’t address his father directly on the matter. What he needs is for Mr. Emrys to do something unforgivable. Something that will get him at least kicked out of Camelot High for all eternity, but Arthur wouldn’t mind if there were other unpleasant consequences, though they aren’t at all definite in his mind. Sitting on his bed with the Biology textbook on his lap, he depicts Mr. Emrys in his imagination – defeated, dumbstruck, helpless. Probably wet from a very convenient rain so that his stupid hair – does the man know that there is such thing as a comb? – is plastered to his forehead. His lips are parted and trembling, his shoulders are slumped, he can’t find any words to say.

This is all good and well, but this is the result, and Arthur still doesn’t have a clue as to the means, so he spends the evening thinking about it and not reading any Biology, and the morning is a kind of a blur. At lunch he isn’t hungry and pushes his sausage and vegetables around the plate aimlessly.

“Penny for them,” Leon says.

“How…” Arthur draws the syllable all too long, “how do I get rid of a teacher?”

He jabs the sausage with his fork forcefully, and the transparent meat juice sprinkles the cauliflower.

“What?”

“You heard me. What do you think?”

“I guess, you just don’t.” Leon shrugs. “There’s this thing with teachers – you don’t pick them unless you are rich like a Rockefeller and can choose a private tutor to your own liking. At school, well, you get by with what you get.”

“I know that, dumbo. But there are… extreme circumstances, see? I want him out of the school. As soon as possible.”

“Who?”

Arthur rolls his eyes.

“Oh, right. Mr. Emrys? He’s the only one who ever gave you a bad mark. Is he an idiot? If he goes on like that, your father will fire him on the spot.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Arthur explains. He isn’t sure himself now how it works, so he limits his explanations to the very essence. “There must be a legitimate reason to fire a teacher. Otherwise he can go to the court or elsewhere, and this one surely will if he’s fired for being an idiot. Cause he’s an idiot, obviously.”

“We don’t want the court,” Leon nods. “I get it.”

“So? What can he do that would be totally bad, so bad that… well, just very-very bad?”

Leon shrugs again and pours some ketchup on his sausage.

“I watched this film last weekend,” he says, clearly trying to help however he can, even if it’s not much. “A comedy about this hot guy in his last year and a teacher, she could be a porn star if you ask me. She told him if they got caught she’d go to jail, and they still fucked, and she almost went to jail, but they managed to sweep it under the carpet until he finished school.”

“Are you saying he has to screw a girl from his class to be thrown out?” Arthur clarifies.

“Screw a girl _and_ get caught red-handed, man.” Leon steals Arthur’s glass of orange juice. Any other day Arthur would steal Leon’s apple juice in revenge, but today Leon deserves a reward for a totally brilliant idea.

“How do I persuade a girl to do that?” asks he.

“Do you need to?”

“What do you mean?”

“Look.”

Leon points at the far end of the canteen. Mr. Emrys is sitting at a table near the wall, and there is a full plate in front of him and he doesn’t pay any attention whatsoever to his food – he is telling something animatedly to a bunch of girls who are listening like monkeys to Kaa. Arthur recognizes his own cousin, Morgana, in this adoring crowd, and her best friend Gwen, and that scary athlete Morgause, and a whole lot of others. There is, indeed, no need to bribe and beg any girl to seduce Mr. Emrys. There would probably be problems with persuading her to expose him and get him fired, because, judging by how close to him they all are sitting, they won’t like it when he’s far, far away and unlikely to ever come back.

Arthur wishes he knew what it is that Mr. Emrys is saying. Must be a load of literary crap, girls love this stuff. And Mr. Emrys loves it too, so fucking much that he doesn’t notice Morgause showing her cleavage heartily.

“Is he gay?” asks Arthur rhetorically, incredulous. Only a gay man or a blind one wouldn’t look at Morgause’s cleavage even once. Like it doesn’t even exist.

Leon doesn’t do rhetorical, though, just like Arthur’s father doesn’t do sarcasm. He says:

“Who knows, he might be. ‘s not like he ever brought a date of any gender to school or something.”

“I bet he loves his books,” Arthur grumbles. “Fucks classics every night, and at the weekend has an orgy with cheap fantasy and shitty detective stories. Goes all like ‘oh yes, this rough metaphor, yes, this description of a landscape is stronger with every line, o-oh, yeah, this old cliché is so hard!..’”

Leon chokes on Arthur’s juice, and that gives Arthur some satisfaction, small but lovely nonetheless.

So, there’s a plan, Arthur thinks. At least stage one of it. Find out who it is that Mr. Emrys likes, boys, girls, books, hedgehogs or whatever.

Gathering data, he defines it feeling like a spy among the enemy, fulfilling a dangerous mission.

He likes this feeling. Definitely.

* * *

It’s disturbingly easy to slip out of the last class when the bell hasn’t even stopped ringing yet; the math teacher, Ms. Freya Jones, is still explaining the home task, but Arthur doesn’t bother – he’ll ask Leon later what it is. He’s always been genuinely good at math, that shouldn’t be any problem.

Reaching the literature class, Arthur hides behind a huge plant with leaves so brightly green that he suspects it’s plastic, but it’s rooted into some actual soil so it can’t be. He’s waiting patiently for Mr. Emrys to come out so that Arthur can follow and learn some dirty secrets of his.

Well, there’s a chance, of course, that today Mr. Emrys doesn’t plan on doing anything dirty; even moronic jerks like him can spend their evenings with TV or something equally innocuous. Arthur bets he likes dull vague films and hates sport channels. 

Though it’s not going to get Mr. Emrys thrown out (it’s probably a major law of nature that literature teachers have such poor taste concerning TV, it must be taught at their uni during a separate course), and Arthur stops thinking about it.

Mr. Emrys is taking a long time gathering the books. Arthur risks sneaking a quick peek through the door: Mr. Emrys is grading some papers. He looks quite comfortable and doesn’t seem to be going anywhere soon.

Damn. Arthur has football training in two hours. He isn’t looking forward to sitting for two hours behind this stupid plant and hoping that no one will walk by and ask what the hell he’s doing there.

He’s trying to figure out what to do when the PE teacher appears in the far end of the corridor. Fortunately, Coach Percival is a very big and heavily-muscled person, so Arthur hears his footsteps from afar and crouches behind the plant before he’s noticed.

“Hi,” Coach says, easily and friendly. “Grading, huh?”

“Hi.” Arthur’s sure he hears a smile in Mr. Emrys’ voice. “As you see. The eighth grades are eager to say everything they think about books, and it’s quite a lot.”

There’s rustling of papers.

“Listen to this. ‘Holden Caulfield loved children very much and snatched them from the rye.’” Mr. Emrys reads aloud.

Coach snorts amusedly, and Arthur has to make a conscious effort not to follow along, because he can’t afford to get caught. But ‘snatched them from the rye’, seriously?

“So, what are your plans for tonight?” asks Coach, so casually that Arthur knows immediately: this question is the result of long hours of suffering spent in futile attempts to find the perfect pick-up line. Everyone who’s ever been a teenager knows this intonation very intimately.

“Plans?” Mr. Emrys repeats, sounding curious and somewhat sheepish. Arthur gets why that is so only a few seconds later, although he isn’t usually so slow to add two and two. It’s the end of the week that gets him, the tiredness, he thinks. “Nope, actually, none at all. I thought I’d have a dinner and some serious quality time with Voltaire and Poe, but if anything more interesting turns up, I’ll most probably ditch the poor guys.”

“Oh, you’re pretty cruel and changeable, I see.” 

“Does the thought scare you away?”

One, Arthur establishes: Coach Percival is hitting on Mr. Emrys with the subtlety of a bulldozer. Two: Mr. Emrys doesn’t seem to mind at all.

“I’m willing to take my chances,” Arthur hears Coach smiling, too. “How about that new movie, _The Thing_?”

“It’s a horror, right?”

“Yeah.”

“A strange choice for a first date,” Mr. Emrys sounds fond, though, not irritated by the prospect of being subjected to watching a couple of hours of some horror crap.

“In case you’re frightened easily, I bought the tickets for the last row. If anything, we flee from the cinema, safe and sound, and I treat you to a pizza to help you deal with the traumatic experience.”

Mr. Emrys laughs, the sound of his laughter clear and bright and delighted.

“That sounds like a plan,” he says. “Tonight at seven?”

“I’ve got some training to supervise until half past six,” that’d be me and the whole football team of Camelot High, Arthur thinks absently.

“It’s alright; I’ll pick you up from here if that’s ok with you? You’ll have half an hour to take a shower and change.”

“Deal,” Coach says. Arthur can’t see him, but he is willing to bet anything that Coach is grinning happily from ear to ear and Mr. Emrys is wearing a matching grin.

“See you tonight, then.”

“Yeah, see you.”

Arthur ducks behind his plant again when Coach leaves the literature class.

For a couple of seconds everything’s silent, and then Mr. Emrys laughs shortly, quiet and content, and starts humming something unrecognizable under his breath. Arthur considers it safe to retreat to the schoolyard where his footie mates are probably hanging out, wondering where he’d gone.

He tears a leaf from the plant mindlessly before going, and hisses in pain when it doesn’t come off as expected: while the soil in the pot is real, the plant is a fake successfully pretending to be the real thing if not inspected closely.

There’s a little bit of blood on his forefinger, and he licks it off, coppery taste of anticipation and flawless schemes sticking to his tongue.

That’s stage one complete, then. Mr. Emrys definitely likes boys, of that Arthur is now sure.

That leads him to thinking on stage two, while he’s walking through the hallway: who’s gonna be the boy who’d seduce Mr. Emrys and expose him and get him out of teaching forever?

There’s only one person Arthur trusts with his whole ‘kicking Mr. Emrys out’ plan, and that’s Leon, but he’s hardly seduction material. He’s smart and kind and loyal, but his looks are around average, and the art of seduction is a totally foreign concept to him, judging by the way he interacts with girls.

It’s when Arthur pushes the door that the thought hits him like there’s a lamp above his head, like he’s a comic hero.

He’ll do it himself.

He’s handsome like the devil himself, he’s got confidence and understanding of the ins and outs of relationships – and he doesn’t even need a relationship with Mr. Emrys, he just needs to… create a situation when he’ll be able to rightfully accuse the moron of abusing his teacher power sexually. Yeah, right, that’s about it.

He’ll do that, and everything in his life will be back to normal once again.

Arthur smiles to his thoughts.

* * *

Well, how does one seduce a teacher? Arthur makes a mental note to look up that movie Leon was talking about earlier. But movies and real life are different things; for one, Arthur’s fairly sure that the kid from the movie didn’t have a ridiculously fit Coach interfering: while that’s been extremely helpful in the aspect of gathering the data, right now Coach Percival is an obstacle. Arthur’s fit too, and he’s pretty sure his features and hair are so much better than Coach’s, but Coach got there first. It’s a good thing they only have the first date tonight, Arthur decides. To ruin a stable relationship is harder than to ruin something that’s never actually existed.

While Gwaine’s entertaining everyone with his tales of latest girl conquests and his signature shit-eating grin, Arthur’s contemplating his next move. He’s never been with a man before – never seen them as attractive, or, at least, more attractive than girls. The only one who Arthur knows for sure to have had same-sex one-night stands is said Gwaine, who’s ready to go after anything that moves, but Arthur can’t very well ask him ‘cause he’s a douche and a big-mouthed son of a bitch, albeit – Arthur has to give him the credit – a charming one. Arthur’s gotta figure out the best tactics on his own. He makes another mental note: to Google some stuff and see if there’s any difference between having it on with a girl and with a boy – except for the evident physiological differences, of course.

Would he have to touch Mr. Emrys’ penis to make the Desirable Situation happen? This question doesn’t seem to have a definitive answer, and Arthur shrugs it off for now, deciding that it can’t be all that different from touching himself anyway. All men are made according to the same pattern, after all, there’d be nothing new.

He makes a mental plan, a to-do list (no one could ever say Arthur’s not goal-oriented):

1) to make the first date not happen. Preferably in some stealthy way so as not to raise suspicions;

2) to chime in between Mr. Emrys and Coach before the second attempt at the first date may be scheduled.

He’s still a bit vague on the second item of the list (some thorough research is in order for later tonight), but he knows what to do with the first.

* * *

The training is over, and Arthur catches Coach by the elbow.

“Coach, I’d like to talk to you for a minute? If you have the time?”

He looks at Coach Percival honestly and sincerely, and his insides are going all fuzzy and funny from the knowledge that he’s on his secret mission about which Coach will never know. The feeling is like his every nerve is being tickled and it’s pretty amazing.

Arthur knows Coach is in a hurry – he’s having his first date with the twink-like literature teacher in half an hour – but there’s not a teacher in Camelot High who wouldn’t find a few spare minutes to talk to Arthur should he need it. Well, Mr. Emrys might be an exception, but he’s the only one; there’s no one like him at school. No one so painfully brainless, that is.

“Sure, Arthur. What do you want to talk about?”

“We have that match with Mercia High next month. I think it’s necessary for us to work out some technical stuff and all, you know, they are dangerous rivals.”

“Actually, Arthur, I’m sure you’ll be able to nail it all by yourself. You’re the captain because you can do that, remember?” Coach smiles, but the smile lacks genuine warmth – he clearly wants to hit the shower and change as soon as possible, and he’s miffed by Arthur stalling him. Honestly, man, Arthur thinks irritably, as if you’ll be awaited by Angelina Jolie clad in spandex or something. It’s just Mr. Emrys, skinny and big-eared, nothing to look at.

He knows he won’t be able to make Coach stay for a fruitful football tactics discussion, but that is just the first part. The second, and the crucial one, is coming now.

“You don’t have time for that, right?” Arthur smiles amicably. He could, of course, remind Coach Percival how displeased Headmaster would be if Camelot High loses to Mercia, but threats are not on this time. He’s playing it nice, because Coach Percival likes Arthur for Arthur, not for his father, and likes him truly, with a kind of elder-brother-fondness, and it’s something that single child Arthur is not willing to lose over Mr. Emrys, of all things. “I understand, you’re busy… I’ll outline some things on my own and we’ll discuss it some other time, right?”

“Sure, Arthur,” Coach brightens considerably, glancing at his watch. “Looking forward to seeing what you have in mind, then. See you.”

Arthur nods and turns to walk away.

Oh the wily irregularities of the school grounds! They’ve caused a lot of injuries over the years despite Headmaster’s best efforts to fix them, but Arthur’s always stayed invincible, quick and athletic enough to avoid their death traps. He flails dramatically this time, thinking fleetingly that he’d make a nice acting career if he wanted, and falls face-first, hard. 

Oh man, that actually hurt.

Arthur inhales deeply, trying to overcome the sudden throbbing pain in his knee – there must’ve been a stone invisible in the grass or something like that, otherwise what could’ve hit him so unexpectedly? 

Also, there’ll be a bump on his forehead. Such is the price of wicked crafty plans.

“Oh God, Arthur, are you alright?” Coach turns Arthur onto his back easily, like Arthur weighs nothing at all. “Are you hurt?”

“I… I don’t know,” Arthur stumbles. He doesn’t really know how to stumble but he’s heard it before. “Oh God, my knee!”

There’s a scratch on his knee – a long and deep one, but definitely not life-threatening. But there’s blood, which is a nice addition to the picture Arthur’s presenting.

“And my ankle, shit,” Arthur whispers and breathes loudly. “It hurts like hell, what if it’s broken? How am I gonna play, Coach, what am I to do?”

“Stay put,” says Coach. He looks calm, but he’s pale enough for Arthur to understand that he’s shaken by what’s happened. “I’ll fetch the nurse. Be calm and don’t try to move, alright? I’ll be back in a minute. Everything will be fine.”

Coach runs to the school building; Arthur sees him, a small figure at such a distance, stopping a couple of other small figures and gesturing back, and then running again.

The two other small figures turn out to be Leon and Kay, who apparently have been loitering around waiting for Arthur to finish his conversation with Coach. They stay with Arthur, and the latter feels Leon’s scrutinizing look all the time. Leon is perhaps the only one who can see through the act, he knows Arthur better than anyone, but he doesn’t say anything. He’s also very, very loyal, has Arthur mentioned that part?

The nurse, Morgan, comes in ten or fifteen minutes. He says the ankle looks fine, not swollen so it can’t be that bad. Arthur persists that it hurts when touched and when left alone, and even makes some unmanly squeals when Nurse Morgan examines him.

“Must be just sprained,” Nurse Morgan decides after some thinking. “A few days, and you’ll be right as rain. Though to make sure, I’d recommend an X-ray, and the sooner the better.”

“Can you take me to the hospital right now?” Arthur looks at Coach with pleading eyes. “It’s awfully rude of me to ask, I know you have some plans for tonight, you were in a hurry, but… what if it’s actually broken?”

He knows it’s not, but Coach doesn’t. And he wins this one, completely, when Coach’s shoulders slump in defeat and he sighs.

“Of course I will. Let’s take you to my car. I’ll just warn Mer… somebody that tonight is off and will be with you in a moment.”

Arthur is confused about the “Mer” for a second, until he recalls that Mr. Emrys’ first name (ridiculous like the rest of him) is Merlin. Right.

The trip to the hospital takes a while, and when Coach is helping Arthur to climb the porch of the Pendragon mansion, there’s already no way he and Mr. Emrys can do something decent with the snippet of the evening that’s left. And they are not into the indecent things yet, if Arthur’s reckoning is anything to go by.

He fumbles closing the door – he has to fake a limp, at least for tonight – and hears Coach dialling a number on his mobile before he even gets back to his car.

“Hi. It’s me, yeah. Look, I’m so sorry about tonight, I really am… well, yeah. Oh, that’s sweet of you, Merlin,” Coach laughs walking to the gates where he’s left the car. “So, tomorrow, then? I’m picking you up at your place? Yep, seven o’clock sharp. I’ll go buy some new tickets right now, then. Yeah. Sure. Goodnight to you too. Sleep tight.”

Arthur closes the door and bangs his head on the wall. The whole evening of strenuous work has just been blown off! He’s never felt as furious as he’s feeling right now; he’s so enraged he can’t even pour the juice into the glass, his hands are trembling.

“I hear you’ve hurt your ankle today.”

Arthur winces, not having expected to bump into his father.

“Yes, I did. Nothing serious though. More of a false alarm case, thank God.”

Under his father’s stern glare, Arthur’s ankle feels uncomfortable. It might have even shrunk in size to become somewhat less noticeable, Arthur’s not sure.

“Good for you, son,” Father says in the end. “I expect you to watch your step better in future.”

So do I, Arthur thinks, standing frozen to the ground like a fucking deer in the fucking headlights while his father leaves the kitchen.

So do I.

* * *

“… and then I puked into his cute little fountain in the garden, and he got so pissed off! Mind you, he had a right to some anger, but I was sloshed, I couldn’t very well be bothered with some fountain, could I? And then I made fun of his green shirt, and that seemed to be the last straw.”

Gwaine is sharing the story of the shiner under his eye with everyone willing to listen. Arthur tunes him out – there’s no time for stupid stories, it’s time for actions, dire but necessary, unnoticed by the world as they are hidden in the depths of secrecy, but brave and vital nonetheless.

Well, Arthur might have gone a little astray in this line of thought. It’s not his fault that thinking the truth feels so nice, yeah? There was an obscure Russian writer who wrote in one of his books that it is always easy and pleasant to say the truth, and Arthur almost wishes that Mr. Emrys heard this learned reference – he’d know he was utterly unfair giving Arthur a C, and his despair after being shamefully fired would be complimented by overwhelming guilt.

Ouch, he’s gone astray again. Still, not his fault.

He watches Mr. Emrys scatter his books all over the table hastily while the students slip into their seats, exchanging the last words and snorts before the lesson. When Mr. Emrys is all ready, he hushes everyone and smiles blindingly. Arthur beholds with genuine disgust the girls raising their hands synchronously when Mr. Emrys asks what they think of the poem _The Raven_ , which they were supposed to read for today.

Arthur hasn’t read it, so he looks through his copy of Poe’s _Selected Works_ (isn’t this just the lamest title for a book in the history of ever?) and reads the poem briefly. It’s quite solemn and boring, and Arthur doesn’t like it one bit. He almost physically feels his nerve cells dying in abundance every second he wastes reading this whiny thing.

“Arthur? Your opinion?” asks Mr. Emrys.

Now would be a perfect moment to get Mr. Emrys intrigued – the first step to seduction. Arthur would love to have a witty and clever answer handy, but he doesn’t. Alas, he was so busy figuring out how to get rid of Mr. Emrys that he hasn’t even touched his homework in days.

By the way, doesn’t he have to pass a History essay today? Shit, he cannot even remember what it should have been about.

“Erm… the raven seems to have a very limited vocabulary?” Arthur says. It’s the cleverest thing he thinks of the poem so far, and it’s not actually half-bad considering the fact that he has just read the thing. Well, at least he has read a half of it.

Gwaine laughs loudly and shuts up abruptly under Mr. Emrys’ unamused look. Girls snicker, and Morgana couldn’t look more condescending and smug if she tried.

Arthur looks Mr. Emrys in the eye, feeling his ears burning hot from humiliation. Has someone there in heavens decided that it’s time for Arthur to receive his lifetime share of this repulsive feeling and sent Mr. Emrys to Camelot High to see to this decision?

Mr. Emrys looks at Arthur back, and his blue eyes are crystal clear and strangely sad again, like the day when Arthur confronted him about the C. It’s like Mr. Emrys pities Arthur, or something along these lines.

It’s unsettling.

“Very well. Morgana, what do you think?”

“Well,” Morgana shifts forward, looking at Mr. Emrys like he’s her light at the end of the tunnel. “Poe wrote the poem as a narrative, he didn’t want to be a work of didacticism, but it’s still an allegory, a grand one, if I can say so. There’s this, well, rift between the man’s wish to forget and his inability to do that, and the raven is, like, fate, or destiny, he’s cutting all delusions off with his nevermore, it’s like a sentence, it means the man won’t ever forget however much he wants to, and he’ll suffer.”

What utter girly crap, Arthur thinks. Inability to forget something? Suffering? Real men don’t suffer, real men go and work out if they are upset, or punch a face or two, or get drunk. Usually the suffering of a hangover is much stronger than anything else that might bother you, and if it’s not, you are recommended to repeat the procedure. Not that Arthur knows it from his own experience – he’s yet to get as drunk as Gwaine always tells he does, at least once, and he doesn’t need to punch people, cause most of them are clever enough to submit without Arthur having to resort to violence.

He works out a lot, though. Suffering or not, it’s good for his health and body.

Mr. Emrys doesn’t ask Arthur about anything until the end of the lesson; in fact, he concentrates on those who are willing to participate in the discussion, and that’s almost everyone. Arthur feels uncomfortable being a part of minority. That’s not something he has done before, what with him being the embodiment of teenage dream and all.

After the bell everyone rushes out to the canteen, eager to eat and chat. Arthur stays behind; he nods curtly, letting Leon and the others know that they’d better go ahead without him.

“Mr. Emrys?” Arthur says, as soon as they are alone in class.

“Yes, Arthur?”

Arthur expects Mr. Emrys to look wary and cautious, if not frightened and unnerved, but Mr. Emrys is cool as a flipping cucumber, which is just not fair. 

Arthur even has to remind himself that it’s totally the point of his secret mission being secret, not public: Mr. Emrys shouldn’t suspect anything, so that he won’t know what hit him.

“I wondered… if you possibly could…” Arthur lets some stumbling out again. He whole-heartedly loves this acting lark. It’s such fun, perhaps he could try and join the drama club here at school later, when Mr. Emrys is history.

“If I possibly could what?” Mr. Emrys asks. His voice sounds like he’d laugh out loud if he thought it proper to laugh at a student.

Bad, very bad. A laughing stock and passionate sex are not things that are associated with each other easily.

“I wondered if you could tutor me. Or at least help me with what I can do with my argumentation and structure and other… whatever was lacking in my essay.” Arthur changes his tactics, he’s flexible like a true secret agent, calm and composed and quick-thinking. Pendragon, Arthur Pendragon, the one and only.

He looks Mr. Emrys in the eye, confident but not cocky. When seducing somebody, one has to maintain the desirable fragile balance between the two.

“You’d like my help?” Mr. Emrys repeats. He’s smiling like he finds the whole situation extremely hilarious. “So, let me get it right: you want to earn good marks in my subject honestly? You want to improve your performance?”

That’s a good word you chose there, Arthur thinks.

“Yeah, absolutely.”

“What changed your mind, may I ask? If I’m not mistaken, as of late you were determined to start some kind of war and decidedly refused to understand that you are not in for any kind of preferential treatment. What was it that made you reconsider your point of view?”

Well, Arthur can’t say that it was nothing because he hasn’t actually reconsidered anything at all. But he hasn’t thought of an answer to that question. Damn. He has to plan his tactics more thoroughly, he notes to self.

“It’s private,” Arthur says without hesitation. “I don’t really fancy talking about it, especially with you. With due respect, Mr. Emrys, you don’t feel any affection to me whatsoever, and I don’t feel like sharing my feelings with someone who is hostile to me.”

Bloody stupid Mr. Emrys laughs again, good-naturedly as if Arthur has just told him a good joke.

“Hostile? God, Arthur, do you really think so?”

Arthur nods cautiously, suspecting a hidden trap in this particular question.

“You’re just a kid, Arthur,” Mr. Emrys says, suddenly all serious. “And if I had it in me to actually think that a kid can be my enemy or something, I wouldn’t go for a teaching career.”

“Oh,” Arthur says. He isn’t sure what he’s supposed to say. On the one hand, Mr. Emrys isn’t laughing anymore, that’s good. On the other hand, he clearly thinks of Arthur as of a stupid kid, and that’s bad. Plus and minus together still make a minus, Ms. Jones taught him that well.

Mr. Emrys cocks his head to the side, watching Arthur curiously. He looks puzzled, as though he doesn’t know what to make of Arthur’s behaviour; he rubs the bridge of his nose with his forefinger, and Arthur notices a narrow blue pen ink line at the back of his hand.

Without thinking all that much, Arthur reaches out and takes Mr. Emrys’ hand into his own; long, elegant pale fingers look somehow delicate in Arthur’s hands, calloused from all the sport he does regularly. Arthur rubs his thumb over the ink line trying to get it off but he looks straight at Mr. Emrys, not paying much attention to the fact that his intense rubbing doesn’t actually help.

Mr. Emrys snatches his hand back almost immediately.

“Arthur, are you alright?” he asks, sounding genuinely concerned. “Coach Percival said you bumped your head yesterday after training, maybe it’s worse than the doctors first thought?”

“I’m alright, thank you very much,” Arthur masters as much dignity as he can. “And, well, I shouldn’t detain you any further if you don’t want to help me. I suppose, that’s your way of preferential treatment: you treat the students you don’t like preferentially badly. If anyone else but me asked for help, you wouldn’t turn them down, would you? Have a nice day, Mr. Emrys.”

“Arthur, wait,” Mr. Emrys says tiredly. “Your apparent love for dramatic exits is getting on my nerves, you know. Let’s do this: do you still have the list of books everyone was supposed to read over the summer?”

“Yes, why?..”

“How many have you read?”

“Erm… a half?” Arthur tries. Under Mr. Emrys’ steely glare he gives in. “Ok, five of them. But they were quite the tomes, you know.”

They were actually the thinnest on the list, and he’s read them because they were the thinnest and would likely bore him for less amount of time than the others. He isn’t about to share this piece of private information with Mr. Emrys, though.

“Excellent. Here’s the deal: you read the rest of them. And you not just read, you think over them and make notes, because I’m gonna ask you some details you won’t find in brief annotations over the Internet or elsewhere. You have a week to do it.”

“But…”

“Prove to me that you’re determined to try and really like literature. Make an effort, Arthur. We’ll talk about it again in two weeks.” Mr. Emrys smirks like the obnoxious bastard that he is. “Have a good day, Arthur.”

With this, Mr. Emrys leaves, humming something under his breath again.

“But I still have that History essay,” Arthur says weakly to the empty room. “And there’s a Biology test on Monday. And… oh fuck.”

That kinda sums it up.

Oh fuck.

* * *

Arthur feels like he’s buried under all the books. 

He went to the library earlier and asked the librarian, Mr. Monmouth, to give him everything on the list. When the books amounted to thirty, Arthur’s guts were filled with freezing horror, and he might have, in a just a little bit unmanly manner, cried out that that was enough, thank you. Also he had to take a couple of History books for the bloody essay, and there are also Biology and math textbooks lying somewhere in the outskirts of the piles. 

And Nurse Morgan turned up today in time for the training and forbade Arthur to take part in it and examined his ankle to make sure it was healing alright. It didn’t help that Arthur had forgotten by that time which one of his ankles was supposed to be sprained.

It’s ten past seven, and Arthur has read a half of _The Scarlet Letter_ , and he’s already half-mad with boredom and anxiety. 

Mr. Emrys and Coach are probably together now. Laughing, talking, heading to the cinema. Maybe Coach even holds Mr. Emrys’ hand in his and plans to have his wicked way with him. Well, he certainly does, why would he ask Mr. Emrys out if he didn’t?

Argh. It shouldn’t bother him anyway, he’ll have Mr. Emrys drooling after him in no time, whatever indecent stuff Coach may be up to tonight.

Arthur takes a piece of paper and tries to make some kind of study schedule. 

If he reads at least three books a day, he’ll have them done on time. If he does this History essay today and the math home task too, then he’ll probably be able to prepare for the Biology test on Sunday…

Arthur juggles the tasks hither and thither, trying to fit them all neatly into the unimaginably tiny amount of time he has. It doesn’t fit. Well, it can fit, but then he has no time to sleep or eat or hang out with his mates over the weekend.

It’s a dead end. And the film starts in twenty minutes. They are probably buying popcorn now, with Mr. Emrys insisting that he pays for his share himself.

Arthur takes _The Scarlet Letter_ and sends it flying to the wall. It hits the destination point with a strangled thud and falls to the floor meekly – if it could, it’d probably whimper, begging for mercy. Arthur kicks the piles, feeling the bittersweet taste of revenge on his tongue, and he doesn’t stop until every single fucking blasted hellish book is lying on the floor and looking pitiful.

He grabs his sweatshirt and makes it out of the house before his father hears any suspicious noises and comes up to check what it is.

* * *

Arthur’s late for the film, but he buys a ticket and goes inside anyway. The film is already on. Arthur pulls up the hoodie of his sweatshirt and moves stealthily along the walls, keeping to the shadows, and tries to discern Mr. Emrys and Coach in the mass of faces in the cinema twilight.

The film has some solemn suspense-creating music on, and Arthur feels his heart pumping with adrenaline. He’s on his mission, he’s gathering data, he’s going to destroy today’s date as well, shatter it into pieces and make one more step towards the Desirable Situation. Oh man, doesn’t it feel good.

It feels actually amazing. Arthur starts thinking of a secret agent career and gets distracted by the vivid visions of big guns, expensive cars, beautiful women, champagne receptions and other things that all the movie spies seem to be handling daily.

He startles when he glances to the audience once again and finds he’s looking straight at Coach and Mr. Emrys.

They don’t notice him – Mr. Emrys seems to be enthralled in equal measure by the film and the enormous popcorn bag on his lap, and Coach is completely fascinated by Mr. Emrys’ profile, sharply outlined and strangely ethereal in the pale light from the screen.

Coach leans in to plant a kiss to Mr. Emrys’ cheek. Mr. Emrys turns to him, his eyebrows lifted in surprise but his lips smiling. Arthur reads him like an open book – fuck, no books, Arthur doesn’t want to think about them right now – he likes it. Dirty little creature, who’d think, looking at him in the classroom, that he’s into shameless making out in the cinema? Well, they are not making out as of yet, but Arthur predicts it. He knows the way these things work, there’s no hiding from him. He’s like Harry Potter and they are like the basilisk – he’ll find them wherever they are, in the toilet or in the walls or anywhere, and chop them up in righteous heroic impulse.

Hmm, maybe he won’t chop anyone up, he’s the good guy, after all. And, well, he’s not really keen on hunting them through toilets, he’ll probably wait outside if need be. But the point still stands.

Arthur slips into the door which says “personnel only” and goes up the narrow stairs. They lead him to the techie room, small and cramped with all kinds of techie thingies – wires, black square boxes with flickering multicoloured lamps on them, huge consoles with hundreds of various buttons. And there’s one techie, curled up sleepily in his chair and munching on an apple. 

Arthur wishes he was a secret agent already and had a gun. However, for now he has to make do with what’s available, so he picks up the nearest black square box – it’s warm and dusty in his hands – and throws it to the projector.

It’s broken with a crack so loud that Arthur thinks at first it might be an explosion, but it’s not. The techie drops his apple and either screams or just curses, and Arthur legs it, not really interested in hearing what the man has to say.

He runs fast – his ankle’s perfectly alright, and he’s the best footballer in Camelot High – and he’s out in a blink of an eye, inhaling the cool evening air in huge gulps, unable to exhale properly. His head is spinning, his heart is trying to get out of his chest, breaking his ribs on its way.

“What the fuck,” Arthur whispers. “What the fuck has just happened?”

He feels drained and exhausted, like after a particularly hard game with the arrogant pricks from Mercia High. His hands might even be trembling.

“Ok,” Arthur says out loud. “It wasn’t on the agenda, but it helped me on my mission. Didn’t it?”

He comes back home, hiding behind corners from every acquaintance he meets on the way. He’s still shaken by what he’s done when he’s back home, and he drinks cold water greedily until his stomach can’t take it anymore.

Then he goes to his room and falls asleep while still dressed, figuring out the next step in his seduction.

* * *

The lunch is disgusting. The vegetables look soggy, the gravy is the same colour as mould, and the meat is good for only one thing – moving it in sloppy circles around the plate feigning actual eating. Arthur feels his eyelids drooping – he has slept for seven hours maximum during the last three days. He’s been reading, writing, making notes, solving equations, cramming – it helped him get the night at the cinema off his mind. He pays for this distraction with an unstoppable sensation of his brain burning from the inside. Simmering. Boiling. Withering, like flowers under scorching sunshine. Whatever. He makes himself drink the tasteless school coffee every break so as not to fall asleep in class.

Mr. Emrys looks fresh and content in his corner of the canteen. Arthur watches him telling something to the girls, his arms flailing, his eyes shining. When Mr. Emrys gets so excited that he accidentally sets his elbow into the stew on his plate, Arthur snorts.

“How’s your plan going?” asks Leon.

Arthur looks up: Leon is watching Mr. Emrys as well. It means he knows Arthur’s been looking in that direction for the last ten minutes.

“Fine,” Arthur says. “Wait and see, the world is almost at my feet.”

“Sure, mate,” Leon nods. “Is that why you look like shit? Must be a pretty hard job, making the world fall at your feet and all, I imagine.”

Sometimes Leon is too loyal for his own good: he does what he thinks is best for Arthur, and while what he thinks is best for Arthur and what is actually best for Arthur can be completely different things, there’s no stopping Leon in his do-gooder mode.

“I look brilliant,” Arthur protests. “I’m as endlessly charming as always, see?”

He winks at Vivian, who’s sitting one table across, and gets a rude gesture in response.

“Well, that one didn’t work,” Arthur has to admit. “But she’s hated my guts since the day we met anyway.”

“That’s right, she did,” Leon agrees. “But you still look like you died a week ago, got up as a zombie, and haven’t even bothered to comb your hair before limping to school. By the way, speaking of limping – how’s your ankle?”

“Fine. Never better,” Arthur says firmly. Unfortunately, his signature glare, that makes kittens pee in fear and rainbows – wilt and dull, doesn’t work on Leon. Apart from rhetorical, Leon also doesn’t do intimidation of any sort (sometimes Arthur thinks it makes Leon stupid, sometimes just envies him wordlessly).

“Ah, good.” Leon has a sip of his juice, and he doesn’t even touch Arthur’s – it signifies that he means business. “You sure there’s nothing you’d like to tell me?”

Arthur looks fleetingly at Mr. Emrys again. The latter has taken several books of different sizes and colours out of thin air and is reading something aloud for the reverent crowd of girls. Arthur can’t hear what it is over the general noise of the canteen. Not that he wants to. He has had his fair share of all kinds of literature over the past few days, enough for a lifetime.

“Absolutely sure, mate,” Arthur says. “I’m fine, and I have everything under control.”

“Ah, I see,” Leon has the audacity to smile into his juice glass, like he knows Arthur’s totally lost and confused. “Why don’t you eat something, then, before you faint?”

Arthur scowls at him and starts chewing on his meat. 

“Have you heard?” Leon starts in his usual voice, evidently having decided to drop the topic of Arthur’s health for the time being. “Some crazy creep smashed the projector in the cinema. What kind of a lunatic douchebag could do that? I mean, it’s the only cinema in the town, and no one knows when they can replace it. I bet DVD sales are going up this week.”

Arthur chokes on his meat.

“Hey, are you alright?” Leon sounds concerned.

“I’m okay. This steak is like a shoe sole, dammit.”

“You don’t say,” Leon looks at his own steak with despair and eats the last of his vegetables. “Next time I’ll stick with pasta, to hell with the meat.”

Arthur suspects that the lunch is never going to end.

* * *

They have literature today. They have it twice a week, and today is still not the day when he’s supposed to turn up with the whole list of books read thoroughly (he has read fifteen of them so far, but he made fucking notes, and if Mr. Emrys doesn’t like it, Arthur’s going to just strangle the man and be over with it, because really, not many things in this world are worth subjecting oneself to such torments). 

Arthur’s listening to Morgana ramble once again, wondering if she really stops making any sense every single time she raves about something in a literature class or if it’s just him, deprived of sleep to the point of blunt insanity and hallucinations. Once in a while the voices of his classmates and Mr. Emrys grow fuzzy and indiscernible, and Arthur pinches his own arm hard. No falling asleep. He can’t afford that. He’s got a lot of things to do.

If he survives the rest of the week, that is. 

“Arthur?” Mr. Emrys asks. “Arthur?”

Arthur startles and opens his eyes. The eyelids are so very heavy, he has to make a real effort to keep them from going down again.

“Did I fall asleep in the middle of the class?” he looks around; he’s still groggy, but he can see clearly that there’s no one else in the classroom. There are noises outside. Break time, then.

“Just at the end of it,” Mr. Emrys smiles, but this time the smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He doesn’t look mad, though. “You know, when I was hired, I was told that in case anyone falls asleep during my lesson, a detention shall ensue immediately.”

“But?” Arthur says, because such an introduction begs for a ‘but’, and even though Mr. Emrys is a brainless moron, he isn’t cruel enough to say this with a meaningful intonation and then add something like ‘and that’s what’s going to ensue this time as well’. In fact, Mr. Emrys isn’t cruel at all. 

That’s probably what makes it so hard to hate him.

“But you seem to be troubled and devoid of sleep so much that a detention would do you less good then some rest or – and – perhaps, a talk with the school counsellor? If it isn’t just the schoolwork, that is. In case it’s something bigger I have to say that you can trust Ms. Mithian with anything, whatever it is.” 

Now he thinks Arthur’s a psycho. 

Well, he isn’t all that far from the truth, is he? Arthur curves his lips in a bitter smile. Mr. Emrys didn’t buy a good boy approach, and the straightforward one didn’t prove fruitful either. Arthur may as well go for the cloak of mystery and dark secrets lark.

“Or is it your ankle? If it’s hurting, let me escort you to Nurse Morgan…”

“It’s alright,” Arthur assures calmly. “It doesn’t hurt.”

“What is it, then? Is it your way of rebellion or something?” Mr. Emrys looks genuinely puzzled.

“Not everything in this world is about you,” Arthur says with dignity, even if he can’t help but think that it has actually been so since recently, and he didn’t even notice how that happened.

“What’s going on, then, if it’s not about me? Tell me, Arthur.”

“It was me who destroyed the projector in the cinema,” Arthur says casually, like a proper badass motherfucker. It’d probably go over better if he wasn’t trying to stifle a yawn saying that, but it’ll do just fine. “And I don’t need to talk with Ms. Mithian, thank you very much. Now, if you excuse me, Mr. Emrys, I have to go. There are still other classes, and after them I have a lot of reading to catch up with, of which, I suppose, you of all people must be aware.”

He rises from his seat, grabs his books and notes and leaves the classroom with his head held up high.

At the door he almost involuntarily looks over his shoulder to check if Mr. Emrys is looking at him going. Mr. Emrys is indeed watching him, with a worried crease between his eyebrows; his blue eyes are serious now and still strangely sad, like they always are whenever Arthur talks to him face to face.

Like he still pities Arthur sincerely. What an unbelievably dumb bastard.

* * *

Nurse Morgan intercepts Arthur smoothly, like a hawk intercepts a mouse. Arthur doesn’t like this comparison, but he’s so weak right now, he really feels like a mouse about to die. The week will be over soon, though.

“Hello, Arthur. Now you are going to listen and do as I say, you understand?”

“What?..”

“Excellent. So, right now you go home and make sure you eat and sleep. Don’t come to school tomorrow – have some rest. And if the day after tomorrow you come back looking like you do now, your father’s going to know.”

Arthur flinches. Blackmail. This is a low blow.

“Why don’t you tell him right now?” he suggests. “Go on, you’ll tell him anyway.”

“You can fool many people with that attitude, but not me.” Nurse Morgan looks at Arthur, all condescending. “I know what kind of man your father is. And I know that in a minute you’ll be on your way home, doing what I’m prescribing you to do, because him knowing that you have problems is the last thing you want.”

That’s true. Nurse Morgan and the Pendragon family have a history longer than Arthur’s life. Doesn’t make him less of a meddling moron, though.

“Fuck you,” Arthur says, ‘cause he’s the one who has the last word, always. And then a guess hits him. “Is it him? Did he tell you what I told him? Did he tell you to blackmail me with… with what I’d done?”

“Who – he?” Nurse Morgan seems to have lost the trail of the conversation.

“Mr. Emrys,” says Arthur through clenched teeth. There are red and white blotches in his line of vision that probably don’t exist in reality, even if he sees them clearly; it doesn’t bother him, he’s too furious for that.

Also, he feels somehow betrayed. He doesn’t know why and he doesn’t want to know.

“What could Mr. Emrys possibly have to do with the fact that you’re walking around the school looking like an extra from _Shaun of the Dead_?”

A lot, Arthur thinks, much more than you can imagine.

Everything, probably.

He turns away and walks out of the school grounds.

* * *

Today is Friday, and this is the day when the world ends.

It’s History today, and Arthur gets his long-suffering essay back with a D.

D.

He isn’t sure, but he can hope that the earth is opening right now to swallow them all. Or some kind of locust comes and eats all the papers with the marks on them. Do locusts eat paper at all? Well, if it’s the end of the world, then they probably won’t be picky.

He has never gotten a D. Not even when he wrote that Julius Caesar burnt Rome (do the Romans have to have so many emperors? Who in their right mind can remember all of them, apart from the History teachers, of course?). He got B+ for that one, and what he’s done this time is definitely infinitely better.

He raises his hand. The world is falling into pieces around him with clattering and smashing sounds audible to him only.

“Mr. Bayard?”

“Yes, Arthur?”

The man is perfectly polite, but Arthur knows he hates him, just like his stupid daughter Vivian does. Hatred stinks, and he can hardly breathe around Mr. Bayard. 

Metaphorically speaking, that is. Arthur might be a psycho, but not to such an extent, he’ll have everyone know.

“I’ve got a D.”

Many heads turn to him in avid interest. A D? The golden boy of Camelot High, Arthur Pendragon, about to flunk History? Arthur feels them watching, waiting for his demise like hyenas wait for a lion to fall.

“That is correct. What was your question, though?”

“Why?”

“Because your knowledge isn’t enough to get a good grade. And you didn’t even think over it. You’ve just rewritten several paragraphs of several books without so much of a courtesy as rephrasing a little bit. A D it is. You have a chance to write another essay and pass it at the next lesson if you wish to get a better mark.”

Mr. Bayard is surely taking some perverse pleasure from saying that. It’s like he dreamt of saying that for years, and now unicorns are dancing little happy dances in his little empty head.

Arthur stands slowly, feeling the ever solid ground sway under his feet.

“How dare you?” he hisses, eliciting a collective astonished gasp from the class.

“Be so kind as to take your seat again, Arthur. We are starting a new topic today, we don’t have much time.”

Arthur moves over to the aisle clumsily; his History textbook falls to the floor with a thud.

That’s when it all clicks in some twisted, painful way; new connections make their way through with a lightning speed, the point of view shifts an inch to the side. 

A low mark. An offer to redo the task. A humiliating talking-to in front of whoever happens to be nearby. It all goes according to a scheme, and this one is not devised by Arthur. This is all Mr. Emrys’ doing. All the teachers will start doing it now. A domino effect, that’s what it’s called.

The world comes crashing down, the clatter and smashing and roar growing deafening, thunderous.

Arthur inhales deeply, his throat hoarse, and runs out of the class before anyone can stop him.

* * *

Mr. Emrys isn’t having a lesson at the moment; he’s got the next one, the one Arthur’s supposed to attend.

“Oh, Arthur,” he says with a friendly smile, a bit flushed from his obvious contentment with how the end of the world is progressing, a tiny ink stain on his left cheekbone. “I was hoping you’d pop in to talk… don’t you have a lesson right now?”

Arthur steps closer to him, as close as he can, and yanks him up by the lapels of his shirt. The material sounds like it’s about to tear, and it’s so ridiculously easy – Arthur’s strong, no matter how sleep-deprived he is, and Mr. Emrys is skinny and light like an insect. A meddlesome, troublesome, infuriating insect that is good only for merciless crashing.

“You,” he exhales, his voice betraying him. “You did it. You started it. You…”

“Did what?” asks Mr. Emrys softly, not frightened in the least. “What did I do to you, Arthur?”

His voice is so calm. His eyes are so concerned. His face is so fucking close to serene.

Arthur wants to hit him, so hard that there’ll be blood, there’ll be teeth on the floor, there’ll be these delicate fine-sculptured bones cracking under his fist.

Arthur kisses Mr. Emrys on the lips, fiercely, desperately – just for a second, a very short, shockingly brief second. 

Mr. Emrys tastes like cheap toothpaste and instant coffee. He tastes like the end of Arthur’s world and the beginning of hell.

Arthur lets him go – almost throws him back to the chair – and makes a step back. Then one more. Mr. Emrys is looking at him with his lips parted in disbelief, mute and stunned.

Arthur waits.

Mr. Emrys fishes a huge chequered hanky out of his pocket without looking, and wipes his lips hastily, getting rid of the few shiny specks of Arthur’s saliva.

Arthur feels like he’s just been punched in the gut. He turns around and runs out, once again. 

“Arthur, wait!”

He hears the quick footsteps behind – Mr. Emrys is chasing him this time. He won’t let Arthur go, he can’t stop at ruining everything that Arthur is, he has to come after him and feed the leftovers to hungry tigers.

Arthur runs for his life, and this time he doesn’t know where his destination point is.

* * *

The streets of Camelot, this sleepy small town, are empty at this hour. Arthur runs fast, no obstacles on his way, and his lungs are starting to burn. Sweat truckles down his forehead into his eyes, not letting him see properly, and he blinks, unevenly and quickly, like he breathes. 

“Arthur, stop.”

Mr. Emrys is next to him – in the car. Of course, he has a car. And however ancient and utterly uncool it is, it’s still faster than anyone using their feet. 

Arthur stops and leans down, putting his hands on his knees, regaining his breath. Mr. Emrys stops the car as well and gets out. His tie is askew, and he doesn’t look serene. Not anymore.

“We need to talk, Arthur. You need to tell me what’s going on.”

Arthur throws a glance sideways. There’s some space between the houses; there’s also a fence, and he can jump over it. Mr. Emrys won’t be able to drive through there, and he’s not as athletic as Arthur, not by a long shot. He’ll escape, he just needs to rest a little bit. A minute, maybe two. And then he’ll run again.

“Arthur, look at me.”

Arthur obeys, straightening up. There’s not much to look at, though. It’s just Mr. Emrys, skinny idiot with very blue eyes.

“I don’t know what I did. You said I did something. Started something. Tell me what it is. I can help you, if you trust me. Talk to me, Arthur.”

Mr. Emrys puts his hand on Arthur’s shoulder. The touch is cool against Arthur’s skin, heated by all the running, even through the cloth of Arthur’s t-shirt. It feels good, and Arthur doesn’t shrug him off.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” he says, hoarse.

“I beg to differ,” Mr. Emrys’ lips twitch in a hint of a smile. “There’s something, and only you know what. What’s stopping you from telling me?”

“’Cause it’s you,” Arthur explains. How stupid is this guy, seriously? If he wasn’t a teacher, which requires meeting certain brain standards, Arthur’d think he’s retarded.

“Which takes us back to square one. What’s the problem with me? Was the task I gave you too much?”

“I handled it just fine, thanks.” Arthur scowls. “The problem with you, Mr. Emrys, is that you don’t know when to back off. You come and ruin everything. You’re like a drunk Godzilla, crushing whatever’s on your way.”

“I don’t know when to back off,” Mr. Emrys repeats slowly, as if processing this chunk of information. “Is this about your grades? I told you, you can get your A if you work for it. It’s easier than you think, everyone does that, and no one died from schoolwork yet.”

“Don’t go all sarcastic on me, okay?” Arthur shrugs Mr. Emrys’ hand off and steps back. He’s almost ready to run again. “You’ve done enough damage already. What is it, kicking someone who’s already lying on the ground?”

Arthur feels exposed to the utmost degree, like his very skin has been taken off. Vulnerable. It hurts to be looked at, hurts to hear Mr. Emrys breathing so closely to him.

Hurts to want to kiss him again so badly that Arthur’s insides are all twisted in sweetly painful knots.

“I’m sorry.” Mr. Emrys sighs. He really looks like he’s sorry to have been impolite to Arthur, and that somehow makes everything worse. Who’d think there’s still any space for worse left to explore? “It was thoughtless of me. Arthur…”

“Yeah?”

“Talk to me. Please.”

Maybe Arthur’d even agree to it. Maybe not. He doesn’t know. Mr. Emrys is looking at him expectantly, giving him a choice. Arthur’s staring at his lips and his sharp pale collarbones which can be seen now that Arthur has torn the upper button of the shirt in class while hauling Mr. Emrys to his feet.

Blood is pumping through Arthur’s body, hard and slow and seething hot.

And he’s having a boner. In front of Mr. Emrys, no more no less.

“Been nice chatting with you,” Arthur says. “I’m afraid I gotta go now. Places to be, things to do, you know.”

He turns his back to Mr. Emrys as quickly as he can and jumps over the fence. To leave Mr. Emrys behind is a matter of several seconds; to stop hearing him, calling “Arthur, wait, come back!”, even long after they’ve parted ways, is much harder.

Arthur deals with this task as well, though. He still can do anything he wants to be done.

* * *

In the end Arthur goes home. There’s nowhere else to go: he doesn’t have any money – he left all his stuff at school, in the History class; he could go to Leon’s, but the latter is still at school. And Father is supposed to be there too, so Arthur’ll be likely to have at least a few hours of relative peace.

Then reality, the cruel bitch, destroys Arthur’s frail hopes, like the Hulk destroys everything he sees. There’s a car at the alleyway to the house – Arthur knows it very well; and there are two people sitting on the porch, evidently waiting for Arthur.

“Hello,” says Coach Percival, friendly when Arthur approaches.

“Didn’t know I was having guests,” Arthur replies, pointedly not looking at Mr. Emrys.

They are holding hands, sitting on his porch. Maybe they’ll sit on him like on a sofa and make out, if it comes to that? Why keep to any boundaries of propriety, why not do all kinds of dirty things in his presence, at his house of all places?

Arthur rubs his temples – a headache is coming. He could take a pill, but for that he has to get inside the house.

For which, by the way, he hasn’t got the keys, they’re back at school in his backpack. Wonderful.

“Some guests come unexpected,” says Mr. Emrys, and the word ‘come’ on those lips really doesn’t calm Arthur down. “Mr. Bayard is covering my class right now. After you successfully gave me a slip, I got back to school, and your father already knew about what had happened. He asked me and Coach Percival to find you and inform him of your state immediately.”

“Oh, I see. Well, go ahead, inform him. Help yourself to your mobiles, don’t mind me.”

“You won’t run from talking again,” Coach Percival warns. Arthur knows that without pointing out the obvious, thanks: Coach Percival is faster and stronger, especially now, when Arthur is already exhausted. 

Mr. Emrys gives Coach an adoring and grateful look from beneath his eyelashes. Coach Percival squeezes Mr. Emrys’ hand briefly in a gesture of support. Something clenches inside Arthur, and for a moment he’s sure he’s going to vomit, but no, it subsides eventually.

“Thank you for making me feel like a prisoner,” Arthur snaps.

“I wasn’t trying to achieve such an effect, and you know that,” Coach Percival says reasonably. He always talks to Arthur like to a reasonable person, and most of the time it makes Arthur want to live up to this expectation. Not now, though. “Why don’t you sit down?”

“I’m better off standing, I think.” Arthur crosses his arms. “But you make yourself comfortable, don’t be shy.”

“Arthur,” Mr. Emrys asks very seriously, leaning forward and looking Arthur in the eye, “why did you kiss me?”

Arthur winces. He didn’t think Mr. Emrys would bring it up in front of Coach Percival. Apparently, he was wrong, and he’s trapped now with a question and no answer.

“Why don’t you ask me instead about _Romeo and Juliet_? Or _The Great Gatsby_ , or _Lord of the Flies_ ,” he offers. “I’ve read them all and made notes. They are at school right now, in my backpack, but I remember enough without them.”

“What did I do to you?” Mr. Emrys asks again, bluntly ignoring Arthur’s initiative. What kind of crappy teacher refuses to be engaged in a conversation about his subject with an eager student? “What’s wrong?”

There’s no chance to retreat strategically as Arthur has already done today three times. And the question is pretty direct.

“Why are you here, Coach?” Arthur asks. “I thought I saw you and Ms. Mithian the other day near her room, you were talking about, hmm, data? Or a date? Between you and me, Coach, congratulations. She’s beautiful and single, unlike Mr. Emrys here. Well, he’s single too, but similarities end there.”

“You will not speak of Mr. Emrys so rudely ever again,” advises Coach Percival, calmly, but Arthur can see the vein on his temple throbbing feverishly. As opposed to the vein, though, Arthur couldn’t see Coach and Ms. Mithian talking – well, for all he knows they could be, but he never caught them at it, accidentally or not.

“Or what? You’ll hit me?”

“Or we both will be disappointed in you, Arthur,” says Mr. Emrys.

These quiet, distant words feel like a slap in the face. 

“Fine.” Arthur raises his hands in defeat. “Okay. Be disappointed, be upset, preach at me about being a good boy, adopt several children from Cambodia and live happily ever after while you are at it. Fine.”

He doesn’t mean it, especially not that last part about children and happiness. But Coach and Mr. Emrys don’t have to know that, they know too much already.

He sits down on the grass, propping himself against a tree. He used to climb on it when he was younger, but then Father had all of the branches cut off for the reasons of Arthur’s safety, and the old tree has never quite recovered enough to grow proper new ones. It’s a trunk with leaves on it now, and it looks a bit freaky.

He closes his eyes. He’ll have to wait until Father comes back with his own set of keys.

He hears Mr. Emrys sighing sadly, and then – buttons of a mobile being pushed; a number being dialled.

Perhaps Father will come home sooner than usual. Perhaps he won’t think it worth putting his work aside for an afternoon.

Arthur’ll find out soon enough.

* * *

“Your father is to come home at six,” says Mr. Emrys with a clear note of disapproval in his voice. Well, if he thinks Arthur’s a spoiled brat and a psycho, he should have probably also thought of where – or, rather, whom – Arthur’d got it all from. Arthur has never known his mother, but he could bet his life on the assumption that she had nothing to do with the aforementioned traits of character.

“And you are to babysit me until then, right?” Arthur looks up at the sky. It’s cloudless, bright and blue. Perfect weather, perfect day. Never should it be said that Arthur Pendragon loses his razor-sharp sense of humour even under the direst of circumstances.

“If that’s no hardship for us, apparently,” Mr. Emrys mimes quote marks in the air with his fingers.

“You can go,” Arthur suggests. “I can handle myself, I’m a big enough boy, you know. Not going to hide from my daddy in the closet or something.”

“Did you ever do that when you were a small child?”

Arthur frowns and waves his hand dismissively.

“Are you a shrink? No, wait, you’re most certainly not one, you were a teacher last time I checked. So don’t ask me about… things.”

“Alright.” Mr. Emrys gives up surprisingly easily, and Arthur suspects there’s some hidden trick inside it.

There’s blessed silence. The only thing staining it is the guess that Mr. Emrys and Coach Percival aren’t going anywhere.

Moreover, Mr. Emrys stands up from the porch and sits down beside Arthur. They don’t touch, but they are so close to each other that Arthur can smell Mr. Emrys’ aftershave, and the weak bitter musky scent of his sweat, and a faint trace of petrol and metal from the car. These smells do strange things to Arthur; he wants to lean closer and inhale them deeply, he wants to find out with his tongue if Mr. Emrys’ skin tastes as bitter and salty and coppery as he imagines it does.

Some plans backfire, Arthur thinks, and this thought chills him to the bone, although he doesn’t even know why he thinks it, and he shoves the thought away, far into the dark dusty corners of his mind where it wouldn’t trouble him.

“What did I do, Arthur?” Mr. Emrys asks, like a fucking parrot, the same thing over and over again the whole day; doesn’t he get tired of it? “What did I do to you? I need to know, Arthur. And you need to tell me.”

“I don’t need to tell you anything. In the matter of my needs, either physical or mental, there’s nothing concerning you. Like, you don’t exist to my needs. You’re nothing.”

Arthur shuts up because he’s talking too much. And Mr. Emrys is smart enough to read between the lines, even when Arthur himself doesn’t know what’s written there.

“Ok, but do you want to tell me? You seem to have been bottling things up for quite a while.”

Arthur doesn’t dignify that with an answer. Mr. Emrys doesn’t move, he just sits there, and his mere existence in such close proximity shatters the last leftovers of Arthur’s nerves. Arthur squints at Mr. Emrys’ hand, just an inch from Arthur’s thigh. This hand is doing nothing, just lying on the grass, long green strands tangling around the slender fingers; it’s so pale against the bright green of the grass and the dark brown of the soil that it makes Arthur’s eyes hurt. 

“Have you read _The Tragedy of Othello, The Moor of Venice_?” Mr. Emrys asks. Can the man have any kind of conversation that isn’t either utterly awkward or dreadfully tedious?

“Yeah. Why?” It’s all rather confused now in Arthur’s head, so many different storylines getting all mixed up together during the last two weeks, but he remembers this one because it had a long preface where some imbecile or other was rambling about whether or not this play is racist, and it occurred to Arthur that Shakespeare might have been a bit too far from the modern day tolerance issues to be bothered with it all that much. Shakespeare is all about love and other soppy girly stuff like that, nothing more than that.

“What, in your opinion, is the driving force of the play?”

“Love?” Arthur hazards a guess.

“Well, yes, but not so much the love itself. What else? What kind of feelings does love give birth to in this play?”

Arthur shrugs. He hates questions that can be answered in many ways and require that specific Arts-ish kind of thinking, which is about as useful as wandering at night in thick fog with your eyes shut and hoping that the way out will find you without you taking part in this finding deal. math is so much easier and more reliable and more… established. It has formulas, and it always has only one right answer.

“I dunno,” he warns, so that Mr. Emrys doesn’t expect him to spill some literary wisdom right here and now. “Jealousy, I think. Bitterness. Idiocy, most of the time.”

“Doesn’t that sound familiar to you?”

“What..?”

“I mean, isn’t it close to what happens in real life, with people surrounding you? Love, jealousy… idiocy. Those are quite common things, don’t you think?”

“Excuse me, is this actually getting somewhere?”

Mr. Emrys glares at him, somewhat irritated, and Arthur can’t help but chuckle at that. 

“In fact, it is. But answer my question first.”

“Well, yeah, I suppose. Ordinary people feeling the same things as Shakespeare’s characters, I get it. But I think real people have an advantage – their names are less ridiculous and easier to remember.”

Mr. Emrys laughs quietly, and Arthur catches himself smiling unabashedly and proudly, like a five-year-old who has just drawn stick figures of his parents and got a pile of sincere praises for that. Not that he knows what it’s actually like, of course, but he’s always had a vivid imagination.

“So,” Mr. Emrys says, suddenly all business again. “Why don’t you like literature if you understand that it depicts what’s around you every day?”

“Who needs to read about something that’s around them every day?” Arthur shrugs. “That’s plain boring. I like more… exciting stuff. Something that’s a little more… fictional, than Shakespeare. And I don’t like books in general all that much. As a concept, you know.”

“Why not?”

“Gosh, I don’t know. I guess I just don’t like it because there’s no choice.”

“How do you mean?” Mr. Emrys sounds genuinely interested, and though Arthur knows it’s bullshit, he might as well explain. It’s not like he has anything better do right now, after all.

“A book sorta makes you stick with the words. Like, there are words, and you read them, exactly the way the author has written them. Movies, there you can look wherever you want. You can, dunno, choose what to concentrate on. Whether it’s the main character doing whatever he’s doing, or a stray cat in the background, or someone’s muddy shoes at the doorstep, or the music that accompanies the main character. With books, it’s like just looking at the picture, full stop. With movies, I get to make my own picture out of whatever details I want to pick up.”

“This is… deep,” Mr. Emrys says, after a long pause.

“You promised not to go sarcastic,” Arthur reminds. He’d snap and yell again, but he’s too tired for that. Mr. Emrys is a cunning bastard, he got Arthur to talk, got him to lower his defences, and he can’t pick them back up because they seem so unbearably heavy now. 

“I’m not. I really think it’s rather insightful, although I personally do not share your opinion.”

“Bad joke there, Mr. Emrys.”

Arthur slips down along the tree trunk and relaxes into the grass. He lets his eyes close against the bright sunshine.

“Why don’t we go inside?” Mr. Emrys suggests. “You seem tired.”

“If you run back to school and fetch my backpack with the keys, then sure. I’ll even make you and Coach a cup of tea and leave you two to some snogging on the couch in the living-room, if you wish.”

Mr. Emrys sighs. He seems to do that a lot around Arthur, and the latter wonders if Mr. Emrys does it as often around Coach Percival. Probably not. Coach Percival doesn’t screw things up as royally as Arthur tends to.

And when did he shift from thinking it was all Mr. Emrys’ fault to maybe, probably, partially, hypothetically suggesting it might be him to blame for something? All this talk about literature didn’t do any good for Arthur, obviously. literature is evil, it destroys people. No wonder Mr. Emrys, soul-sucking maniac that he is, chose this subject to teach.

The grass smells dryly and strongly. Mr. Emrys is still an inch apart from Arthur, still all sharp-angled and light and pale and smelling warmly with that stupid aftershave of his and generally driving Arthur mad, but it’s a hazy, fuzzy kind of mad, because he’s so tired. 

He’s so tired of fighting. He can afford some rest before the next battle, can’t he?

Arthur drifts off, washed over by the indiscernible murmur of Mr. Emrys and Coach Percival’s voices, tickled by the stern grass. His world has been destroyed and he’s falling asleep in the middle of the ruins, but, unexpectedly, it feels sort of… nice.

That’s not the word, but Arthur guesses it will have to do.

* * *

Arthur wakes up to the sound of a car parking. He recognizes the specific rhythm of the car door being shut and the following alarm switch-on sound and footsteps; it’s his father’s combination. He’d know it anywhere.

He keeps his eyes closed. Not like Father would stop at seeing him asleep and let him rest before saying everything he thinks, but it’s good to have even such a small advantage as being awake and alert while everyone around is sure he’s dozed off.

“Good evening, Headmaster,” Mr. Emrys says.

“Good evening, Mr. Emrys, Coach.” There’s stiffness in Father’s voice which Arthur has learnt to identify as stifled anger. “Thank you for looking after him until I came home.” ‘Him’, not ‘son’ or even ‘Arthur’. Someone’s in trouble, and Arthur suspects he knows who exactly that is.

Father approaches, and Arthur can’t hold back any more, never could – he opens his eyes and stands up clumsily. Father’s face looks like a mask made of stone.  
“Arthur,” Father says in his special ‘I’m way past cross and hitting bloody furious’ cold voice. “I’m very disappointed in you.”

Gee, Arthur thinks. Like that’s any news.

He feels a tight, heavy, hot knot of fear, misery and, strangely, something very much like rebellion stir in his stomach. It makes him sick and desperate, so he’s just standing there, listening to what his father has to say.

“What you did was intolerably stupid and insolent. I do not wish to know what on Earth possessed you and made you be rude to a teacher and leave the classroom in the middle of a class, but I want it to never happen again. Am I making myself clear?”

“Yes, Father,” Arthur says. That’s the only answer Father is expecting and ready to accept, so Arthur should be a good son and provide it, shouldn’t he? Even if he fails regularly to live up his father’s expectations, it doesn’t mean he can stop trying to do it.

Although sometimes it seems pointless, but Arthur always prefers not to ponder on that too much.

“Right now, you go back to your room and don’t leave it until tomorrow, and you will do all of your home task _properly_ ,” Father orders. “And I want you to apologize to Mr. Bayard tomorrow. Make sure he accepts you apology and do make an effort to be polite, if you can manage that.”

Mr. Emrys said to Arthur these exact words just a few days ago – make an effort. They all want him to make an effort now, don’t they? Push him as if he can’t ever snap. Try harder, accomplish this and that, jump over your head but do not disappoint me, don’t be a failure, I expect you to do your best, Arthur, and I expect it to be good enough, no matter what it costs you.

He isn’t quite sure what exactly doing his best time after time costs him, but he thinks it’s something big and somehow very dear to him, this undefinable something. And even though it’s big, it’s not big enough to satisfy everyone who’s made it their habit to say to him: “Make an effort.”

Why don’t you go fuck yourself, Arthur thinks, grinding his teeth, I don’t want to apologize to that douchebag, and I won’t do it even at gunpoint.

Arthur lets out a deep long breath and says it all out loud. Right to his father’s face.

It should have been liberating, but instead it hurts like someone’s twisting a knife in his guts.

Arthur turns around and walks out right through the gates. He doesn’t run this time, but he knows better than to be pompously slow and his steps are quick, because otherwise Father may recover from the fury fit he’s having soon and manage to catch him by the elbow.

“Arthur!” Mr. Emrys and Coach Percival catch up with him in the street. “Where are you going?”

“I don’t know,” he says honestly. “I could crash at Leon’s, but he,” Arthur looks fleetingly back at the house over his shoulder, “he will be looking for me there first place.”

“And you should let him find you,” Coach Percival says seriously. “You are his son, and he’s your father. You can’t just walk away from a… well, a fight between you two.”

“Are you insane?” Arthur quickens his step, but they both keep up. “No bloody way.”

“Watch your language, Arthur,” Mr. Emrys says softly.

“Sorry I’ve offended your sensitive natures,” Arthur mutters irritably.

“So, where are you going then?” Mr. Emrys asks, dropping the issue of appropriate and inappropriate vocabulary.

“Dunno. I guess, back to school for my things first. I’ve got an apple and a bit of money in my backpack, I’ll figure it out then. If no one stole them, that is.”

“There aren’t any thieves in Camelot High, don’t worry,” says Mr. Emrys absent-mindedly, as if thinking over something else entirely.

“There aren’t now, are there?” Arthur snorts. “Say that to Cedric from the ninth grade. He’ll probably agree with you and pickpocket you when you look away to wipe the tears of pride for such high morality standards in our school.”

Mr. Emrys makes a strange sound, like giggling and the beginning of a stern rebuke mixed in one. Arthur glances at him – Mr. Emrys is smiling, his head tilted downwards a bit guiltily as if he knows he’s not supposed to find smart-arse comments like this funny, but he still does. It makes his eyes crinkly around the edges, his cheekbones even more prominent, and the afternoon sun makes his ears glow with tender red.

He’s unbelievably non-teachery now, caressed by the warm sunshine, painfully human and deceptively attainable.

Arthur wants to kiss him again so much his lips itch.

“So, you don’t know where to spend the night, right?” Coach Percival asks.

Arthur looks to the other side, to Coach Percival, feeling a bit stupid rotating his head like that. He notices out of the corner of his eye that Coach Percival holds Mr. Emrys’ hand – lightly, just fingers intertwined, a small symbolic gesture, having no other meaning but protectiveness and affection.

He closes his eyes briefly – there must be something in them, a dirt particle, whatever; otherwise, why would they sting?

“Right,” he says. His voice is hoarse, and he suddenly feels that his throat is dry and uneven, like sandpaper. He could do with some water. There’s a drinking fountain in the hall at school, he can stop by it for a few seconds as he gets there.

“Why don’t you spend a night at my place, and tomorrow both you and Headmaster will have calmed down and will be able to talk?” Coach says.

“I think it’s an excellent idea,” Mr. Emrys says, his eyes bright and his smile warm as he looks at Coach Percival. “You have to get a proper dinner, not just an apple, and we are not having you sleep on a bench in the park or something.”

“Why are you doing this?” Arthur asks, looking at the pavement in front of him. It’s easier to say when he’s not looking at the ones he’s actually talking to. “Why do you bother? You aren’t my relatives or something – well, relatives are even worse, Morgana despises me enough not to piss at me if I’m on fire, well, that’s the point – and here you are, talking like you actually care.”

“Oh Arthur,” Mr. Emrys says gently, and there’s this goddamn pity in his voice, _again_. Arthur whips his head up, looking for the signs of sarcasm and mockery in both Mr. Emrys and Coach Percival’s faces, but there’s none, none at all. “But we do.”

Coach Percival nods, confirming that yes, they do.

Arthur bites his lower lip so hard that he tastes blood. It’s salty and bitter and the only thing apart from saliva to appear in his mouth during the day. He really needs to get to that fountain and that apple.

“Would you like that?” Coach Percival asks. 

“I can pay you,” Arthur offers, giving in (lame! lame! he thinks, but he likes the idea of a bench in the park even less than he likes this). “Like at a hotel. I don’t want to… intrude. Or whatever.”

“You can wash the dishes after dinner,” Mr. Emrys says, smiling. He’s got dimples on his cheeks; Arthur has never noticed them before. Are they the reason why all the girls follow him like Sancho Panza follows Don Quixote? And here he thought they liked literature. Hah. “That would be payment enough.”

“Indeed,” Coach says, smiling like the lovestruck moron that he is and looking at Mr. Emrys.

“Deal,” Arthur says.

Oh man, isn’t he just perfectly, irrevocably screwed.

* * *

Things are awkward. Arthur feels utterly ill at ease at Coach’s place ‘cause it’s unfamiliar, it’s a hostile territory. One isn’t supposed to come to a teacher for a dinner and a sleepover. He’s not sure where to go, how to behave, where to put his backpack, whether he’s a priori supposed to take off his shoes or not, if he can go to the kitchen and look through the drawers to find a glass and get some water, etc, etc. He just sits in the living-room and studies the photos on the walls because it’s not like he’s got anything better to do, and also it’s kinda distracting him from his thoughts. 

The photos are all filled with people Arthur doesn’t know – they must be Coach’s friends. Coach himself appears once or twice, and there’s a recent addition on the left, close to the window: a picture of Mr. Emrys with a chocolate ice-cream in one hand, smiling shyly and looking all dishevelled. The picture was taken in the town, near the cinema – it was still early, judging by the position of the sun – they probably went in to watch their film right after that ice-cream.

And then Arthur turned up and smashed the projector. Arthur wonders if Coach Percival is aware of this detail, or if Mr. Emrys keeps it between himself and Arthur.

It probably doesn’t matter.

“Hope you aren’t allergic to tomatoes and dairy.” Mr. Emrys sits down on the sofa next to Arthur and stretches his long, long, long legs forward, letting his head hit the back-rest of the sofa and somehow just melting into the plush cushions around him. Arthur, on the contrary, goes all stiff near him, and it’s not even an unsavoury euphemism, it’s just the plain truth.

“No, I’m not allergic to anything, why?”

“Perc… Coach Percival is making a lasagna. There’s a lot of cheese, tomatoes, meat, and other delicious things in it.”

“You’re not helping him make it?”

Mr. Emrys shrugs. 

“I only get in the way in the kitchen. I can sit there with him if I promise not to touch anything, but I touch something anyway, accidentally, and it breaks or gets lost when it’s needed. If someone knows what to do when you don’t, it’s better for everyone to let them do it and to not create obstacles.”

Arthur suspects that they are not actually talking about tonight’s dinner here, but he can’t catch a single phrase that would let him accuse Mr. Emrys of being stodgy and didactic, so he just chooses not to react to that.

“Let’s talk about you, not about our dinner,” Mr. Emrys offers. “What are you planning to do tomorrow?”

“Dunno.” Arthur licks his lips, suddenly nervous. “I have to go to school, I guess. Maybe I’ll be lucky enough to avoid Father, but chances are I won’t be.”

Mr. Emrys looks at Arthur expectantly, but Arthur doesn’t have a clue what he expects. 

“I could take tomorrow off, of course, but it wouldn’t change anything. Better go and face it than hide in the corner and hope it’ll go away on its own. It never does, so.”

Arthur stops talking, because he’s sure he’s one step away from nonsensical babbling.

Mr. Emrys smiles encouragingly and warmly, to Arthur and to him only. No Coach or anyone else in the picture. Arthur could live with that.

“And I guess I’ll have to rewrite that History essay. And some other stuff. And an essay for you, I think. It still has a C on it.”

Arthur stops again because he’s one step away from promising to Mr. Emrys to take the moon off the sky, invent a cure for cancer and AIDS all in one, stop all wars, contact the inhabitants of Alpha Centauri and sign a peace treaty with them, blah-blah-blah. 

“I could tutor you, if you really want to excel in my class,” Mr. Emrys says. “If you really want to try and work for your mark.”

Arthur tilts his head to one side and smiles awkwardly, with his lips only.

“I’d love that.”

The only approach Arthur hasn’t tried by now is the shy and needing-a-firm-leading-hand style one. He doubts if his Grand Scheme is still at the top of his to-do list – he’s got his plate pretty full right now – but he’s stuck in the process like a fly in honey and he can’t get out. He started the seduction thing, and he’s going through with it. That’s determination for you.

“Great.” Mr. Emrys squeezes his shoulder briefly. Arthur likes that Mr. Emrys touches him out of his own volition. Is it working already? Is Mr. Emrys just demonstrating his stupid pity and touches him like he’d pet a stray kitten (Mr. Emrys is totally the type to pick stray kittens up and give them milk)? “Let’s get the table served for dinner, shall we?”

“Sure, why not,” Arthur says.

Over dinner they discuss Arthur’s plans for the oncoming football match with Mercia High and the schedule for the literature tutoring, and generally it feels like Arthur is a kid with two gay parents which, being not a bad thing on its own, is actually not how Arthur wants to feel around Mr. Emrys and Coach Percival. God forbid.

While Arthur washes the dishes as he’d agreed to do earlier, Mr. Emrys and Coach Percival are saying goodbye to each other in the hall. Not that there’s much actual saying of anything going on – Arthur leaves the water running and sticks his head out of the kitchen door, and he catches them kissing, Mr. Emrys’ jacket hanging loose from his shoulders, Coach’s hand supporting his head, digging through the thick sooty black hair.

Coach is taller than Mr. Emrys, and he has the latter pinned against the door, so small in comparison. Arthur can see Coach leaning his head down, seeking a better angle; he can see Mr. Emrys’ hands clutching onto Coach’s shoulders, caressing his neck, dipping under the collar of his shirt. They are kissing languidly, thoroughly, exploring each other, like they are locked in their own little sensual bubble and have all time in the world.

Arthur feels like he’s gonna bring all the lasagna he consumed over dinner right back. Also he’s hard as a rock, so much it’s almost painful, and when he lets himself imagine for a tiny fracture of a second that it’s him whose shoulders Mr. Emrys clutches onto, his mouth that makes Mr. Emrys whimper breathlessly into the kiss, it’s like a star explodes in his lower belly, all heat and inevitability and twisted, bizarre, breathtaking rightness and beauty.

He retreats to the kitchen and tries to catch his breath again, resuming his dishwashing duty. 

Mr. Emrys comes to the kitchen for a moment to say goodbye to Arthur too, and it’s a proper goodbye-saying, involving several words and zero touching. Arthur manages to nod in response and turns back to the sink. Thank God, the pan in which the lasagna was cooked is covered with cheese that’s hard to wash off, he can concentrate on that.

Coach Percival gives him clean sheets and a new toothbrush, and they spend a couple of hours before bed together: Coach watches TV, the news and some on-going show crap, and Arthur reads a book he’s found under the couch on which he’s supposed to sleep later. The book is called _The Godfather_ , and at first it’s a bit boring, but later Arthur gets caught up in the whole mafia vengeance and coolness thing, and he regrets not being able to finish it before Coach makes it clear it’s time to go to sleep. Maybe later. He could go to the library and ask if they have it. Or, maybe, there’s a movie made after this book, Arthur will have to check.

Arthur sleeps like a baby through this night: no dreams, no disturbance, no problem with falling asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow, despite the unfamiliar surroundings, and smells, and sounds.

A new day is ahead.

* * *

At school he’s met by looks: curious, mocking, cautious. He swims through the sea of the prying attention with his eyes cast down, and Leon catching him by the elbow is most unexpected.

“Hey, mate, are you alright? I called you last night, but your father said you were out and hung up, and your mobile was at school when you took off. What’s going on, where’ve you been?”

“I slept at Coach’s.” Arthur shrugs. “I kinda let myself out in the middle of an intense conversation with Father, and I wasn’t exactly enthusiastic to come back and hear what he thought about it. So Coach offered to let me spend the night at his, and in the morning we’d figure out something.”

“Wo-ow,” Leon drags the sound. It feels like Leon either doesn’t quite believe him or suspects that there’s more to it than Arthur is letting on. “Did you? Figure out, I mean?”

“Not quite,” Arthur confesses. “I think I’ll make it up as I go along, you know, improvisation and all. Anyway, are we having physics in a couple of minutes? Hell, I haven’t done anything.”

He starts walking determinedly to the necessary classroom, and Leon adjusts to his pace.

“You know,” Leon says, not looking at Arthur, “if you go on this way, you’re gonna flunk pretty much everything.”

Arthur stops, frozen to the spot.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not like teachers still give you good marks whatever you do. It’s kinda… changed. I think Mr. Godwyn will close his eyes at the fact that you haven’t touched your homework, circumstances and him being a nice man, you know, but you can’t go on like this.”

“Thank you very much for your advice,” says Arthur icily. “I shall take it into consideration.”

He makes a move, but Leon stops him again, clutching his shoulder. It hurts.

“Let me go, you idiot!”

“Shut up,” Leon says, very calmly and quietly. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, but I worry about you. Do you understand? I’m worried. You look like shit, you shout at the teachers, you ignore the fucking home task…”

“Since when are you the reasonable one?” Arthur snaps.

“Ever since I met you, you half-wit!”

That doesn’t sound so nice; in fact, it’s pretty offensive. Arthur has known Leon all his life – and if there was a time when he didn’t, he must have been so small that he doesn’t remember it – and the suggestion that Arthur’s been a reckless moron his whole life doesn’t improve his mood.

Though, suddenly, this thought is soothing. Leon is a constant, always has been and probably always will be. Something to hold onto while he, Arthur, looks like shit, shouts at the teachers, and ignores his home task.

Arthur signs in defeat and carefully removes Leon’s hand from his shoulder.

“Come on. Let’s not test Mr. Godwyn’s niceness by being late.”

He’d better let Leon think whatever he thinks now and try to help; that shall occupy him alright. Leon’d better not ask questions about the Grand Scheme, or he’ll be able to understand something that Arthur himself doesn’t really understand. Leon does that, annoying git.

* * *

Father doesn’t approach Arthur today. Arthur checks with father’s secretary, Ms. Catrina the Troll, and finds out after several minutes of her not-so-discreet displeasure – she generally treats Arthur like a piece of stale moulded bread that’s to be thrown out into the rubbish bin – that Father has gone out for the morning to discuss some matters with Mercia High about that football match.

Isn’t it like a blessing from the heavens themselves? A chance to breathe before Arthur meets whatever destiny’s keeping for him up its sleeve.

He catches a flash of Mr. Emrys’ black hair and slender body at the end of the corridor as he leaves his father’s office, and it fills his blood with some kind of tingly, buzzy feeling. Arthur decides it’s the thrill of a hunter ready to shoot his prey and have its head on his wall as a trophy. 

* * *

“What do you think was wrong with him?”

“Everything?” Arthur suggests.

“Pretty much.” Mr. Emrys bites his lower lip, thoughtful. “He was born a cripple, and how people treated him maimed him emotionally. That’s why Esmeralda mesmerized him so much – he didn’t know beauty and kindness outside the narrow borders of his routine, and he got overwhelmed.”

Arthur is not sure how they got around to discussing Hugo – he hasn’t even read _Notre-Dame de Paris_ , and the tutoring is supposed to be about English literature, not French – but here they are, in an empty classroom, filling the two hours break between Arthur’s classes and football training with a discussion about strange people, strange places, and strange things. Arthur doesn’t mind, as long as Mr. Emrys sits in front of him with his sleeves rolled up so his wrists are in Arthur’s view, frail to the point of being breakable, pale with light blue veins streaming up the palm. 

“This is… bizarre,” he says. He gave up on figuring out the right answer to Mr. Emrys’ questions about half an hour ago and started to say whatever came to his mind first, but Mr. Emrys doesn’t seem to have noticed any difference. “I mean, lots of things can overwhelm, we don’t love all of them after that. He didn’t know Esmeralda at all, why would he love her all of a sudden? Can this even be called love?”

Mr. Emrys leans back together with his chair, balancing on two of its legs. It looks quite dangerous, and Arthur contemplates the idea of trying the knight-in-shining-armour approach, should Mr. Emrys fall and bump his head.

“That’s the thing about love, Arthur. It comes with a thousand faces and in a thousand forms, and all of them are true. Its path is rarely like what we see in romantic comedies on TV or something, it’s complicated, and painful, and even tragic, quite often. Well, to take an example that’s closer to you than a hunchback from the fifteenth century. Your father loved your mother dearly, but she died soon after you were born. Did he let anyone into his heart during all these years?”

Arthur tenses, but Mr. Emrys seems to be genuinely waiting for an answer. Of course, the idiot doesn’t know that Arthur’s mother is a taboo. Father doesn’t speak of her, doesn’t show Arthur any pictures apart from just one that Arthur keeps on his nightstand; it’s almost like she never existed, and Arthur’d be sure of that, if he didn’t have himself as a decisive proof of the fact that she had been there at some point in the past. Actually, it seems like Mr. Emrys, the sneaky bastard, knows more about Arthur’s mother than Arthur himself, and it calls out an urge to ask, to find out more, to shake the truth out of him.

Arthur takes a deep breath.

“Not that I know of,” he says. 

“See? Tragic. It’s like a reflection in a mirror. The general concept of love is reflected in each and every one of us, in real people and in book characters, and even if it looks different every time, it’s the same thing, and we still recognize it, no matter what it looks like.”

Mr. Emrys’ lips look dry, and he licks them instinctively every twenty minutes or so. Not that Arthur notices. Those lips are saying bullshit, and Arthur wants them to shut up.

“It’s never straightforward, Arthur,” Mr. Emrys says. “It’s never the way we’d like it to be.”

“Is that what’s happening between you and Coach Percival?” Arthur asks. If Mr. Emrys is allowed to step into the Land of Private Topics, then so is Arthur. “Something wrong between you two?”

Mr. Emrys looks sincerely confused for a second, like he needs to catch up with what Arthur means.

“No, we’re great. I wasn’t talking about Coach Percival and me, as a matter of fact.”

“Who were you talking about, then?” Arthur presses. For a better effect he’d need a lamp to direct the light to Mr. Emrys’ face, but since he doesn’t have it – and it’s broad daylight anyway, it’d be pointless – he decides it’s too cheesy for him. The really cool secret agents don’t do cheesy, it’s beneath them. They are original and inventive, they surprise their enemies.

“Well, about everyone in general. General concepts are what you need, Arthur, if you ever want to write an essay that would deserve an A. You have to learn to extract the general idea from particulars, and it’s something you don’t know how to do – from what I saw of your essay, you pay too much attention to details and can’t make out the big picture. That’s why your argumentation is lacking: you don’t really know what you’re arguing about.”

What a weasel you are, Arthur thinks, irritated. A chance to overpower Mr. Emrys in a conversation slips out of Arthur’s hands, laughing mockingly.

Well, they still have about an hour of tutoring. He’ll have another opportunity, and when it comes, he’ll be sure to grab it and not let go.

Mr. Emrys gets up and walks over to the window. It’s wide open, letting the warm wind and sunlight inside. The wind smells of hot grass and dry dust, and it stirs Mr. Emrys’ hair and the hem of his shirt; the sun makes his sharp features softer and paints his pale skin golden. Mr. Emrys’ eyelashes flutter as the sunlight, still bright, hits his eyes, and this tiny movement makes Arthur shiver with pure, unmasked and undeniable lust.

He shifts a bit, hiding the lower part of his body under the disguise of the desk. It’s still hard to breathe, and his heart is beating loudly enough to tune Mr. Emrys’ words – he’s speaking again, the stupid chatterbox – out for a while. Arthur doesn’t know how much he misses, but when the noise of the heartbeat subsides to its usual level, he finds Mr. Emrys looking at him askance, clearly waiting for an answer to something.

Arthur blinks and asks Mr. Emrys to rephrase the question – this line always works and doesn’t arouse suspicions.

The remaining hour stretches infinitely and still ends too quickly.

Arthur leaves the classroom with his head full of knowledge he doesn’t need and a gnawing vague feeling of something bad happening.

* * *

Her hand goes up his thigh, and he whispers breathily: “God… you’re mine, mine.” 

“It’s wrong,” she says, and kisses him on the lips.

“I know,” he says, and starts to undo the buttons of her blouse.

Arthur watches them with polite disinterest. He’s found the movie Leon was talking about, and he’s watching it online. He probably shouldn’t do it, since it counts as stealing intellectual property, but, firstly, Arthur’s already a criminal after the projector incident, and one charge more doesn’t make any real difference to him (he’s doomed to life of misery and imprisonment anyway, he may as well have some fun before he can see the sky only through the bars), secondly, he can’t say it’s intellectual. It’s a load of bollocks, and Arthur thinks privately that the producers of this movie should pay people for watching it, not the other way round. It doesn’t give him any tips on seducing Mr. Emrys, and it doesn’t even provide entertainment. Hell, he’s not even aroused, looking at the teacher with porn-star looks. There’s clearly something very wrong with her.

He closes the tab with the movie, ‘cause he’s quite fed up with it, and opens Facebook, Google, MySpace, Twitter, and Livejournal. He might as well do some research, since Father found him after training yesterday, and now Arthur is grounded until his uni classes start (and he hasn’t even chosen a university to enrol in, so that says something. The world already beholds now the beginning of imprisonment and suffering yet unseen). He’s supposed to be doing his homework, but looking Mr. Emrys up everywhere on the net is much more interesting. Also, Father isn’t at home, and what he doesn’t see doesn’t hurt anyone, does it?

After twenty minutes of thorough research, Arthur establishes that Mr. Emrys is not only a sneaky, wily, cunning, evil bastard, but also a secretive one. He has an account on Facebook, and it’s totally locked under the list of people who he has friended, and there are few mentions of him online: the official site of Camelot High, alongside with all the other teachers whose profiles are there (it says Mr. Emrys graduated the top of his class at university, and his hobbies are listening to instrumental music and swimming), the site of the remand home where he worked before, and the archive of a newspaper of some godforsaken hole called Ealdor, that features an article about a brave teenager Merlin Emrys who saved his neighbours’ son, Mordred, from a roaring fire. It just plainly says “roaring”, gosh. Arthur takes a good look at the blurry picture that the article provides: Mr. Emrys – just Merlin back then – is covered with soot and ashes, and he’s looking even skinnier and stupider than now, with his grin from one enormous dirty ear to another and with a crying toddler – presumably Mordred – in his arms. 

Well, maybe the shy approach is the best one, Arthur thinks. Mr. Emrys is clearly into saving those in need of a saviour.

Somehow, it’s not giving him the former pleasure – all this thinking over the Grand Scheme and figuring out how to seduce Mr. Emrys, to make him Arthur’s puppet, and to destroy him. It feels like a duty, not a sacred one that would give Arthur the thrill, but a tedious one, like reading his History textbook for tomorrow.

He rubs his forehead in frustration. 

He can’t explain it, or even name it, but it’s like the joy is all out of the Grand Scheme, like the freshness isn’t in stale water anymore. The fun is gone, and it feels like it’s gone for good.

He looks at the picture again and can’t bring himself to call the boy in it Mr. Emrys. It’s Merlin, as young as Arthur himself; probably a shy nerd without any friends, or, maybe, a popular guy because he’s sweet, and he can swim well, and he’s smarter than everyone else in his class. Arthur can’t decide which variant is more possible, both and none seem fitting. Mr. Emrys, even as teenager Merlin, is a mystery Arthur can’t crack. Yet.

What do I need to crack him for, if not for the Grand Scheme? Arthur thinks.

He doesn’t know, but he bookmarks the page with the article.

* * *

Arthur is waiting for Mr. Emrys at the school gates. He’s taking a risk being outdoors after classes are over, he knows Father isn’t going to like it in the least, but he doesn’t really care. What else can Father do to him? He’s done all he could, the only thing left is to chain Arthur to a chair in the bedroom. Not something he’d do, at least just because there are no chains in the house. 

“Arthur?” Mr. Emrys, holding a pile of books in his arms – just like he held that almost-burnt baby all those years ago, stops next to Arthur. “I thought we didn’t have a tutoring today… do we? Why didn’t you come in and tell me? I’m sorry, I can be forgetful…”

“No, no, we don’t, actually,” Arthur interrupts before Mr. Emrys manages to apologize a dozen times more. “I just, well, I thought I’d help you with your books, ‘s all.”

“Oh,” says Mr. Emrys. “That’s-That’s nice of you. But I only have to carry them to my car, it’s really not that far.”

“Um, yeah.” Arthur shifts from foot to foot, feeling his cheeks burn unpleasantly. “But they are still heavy, aren’t they? I-I’ve gotta train my muscles, you know, heavy lifting and all, and I won’t risk lifting a sofa or something, but the books will do. They’d be, you know, perfect. So it’d be not just me helping you, but also you helping me. Like, mutual and common benefit thing, you see?”

Mr. Emrys looks at Arthur with a sad frown, still holding the books close to his chest, like a shield of some kind.

“No, I don’t think I do,” he says slowly. “Thanks for the offer, Arthur, but I’m positive I can handle it on my own.”

“I didn’t mean it like you can’t.” Mr. Emrys starts walking to his car again, and Arthur walks by his side. The books smell like dust and paper, and Mr. Emrys smells like coffee and Coach Percival’s shampoo. Maybe he took a shower at Coach’s, ‘cause something was the matter with his plumbing? Maybe it’s not shampoo, but some kind of perfume, deodorant or whatever, and Mr. Emrys happens to fancy the same scent as Coach. 

Maybe he stayed at Coach’s the previous night, but didn’t sleep on the couch. Like, not at all. 

Maybe… Arthur cuts the thoughts right there; they already make him gape and choke like a fish out of water, and such things better be handled in private.

“I know,” Mr. Emrys agrees. “But I’m still inclined to deal with them myself.”

It’s a dismissal; Arthur knows one when he hears one. What he doesn’t know is what went wrong and when. And, also, what the hell is wrong with him? Something must be, ‘cause Mr. Emrys doesn’t spare him a single glance, opening his car and putting the books in the backseat. He can at least look at Arthur, can’t he? It’s not like Arthur is repulsive to look at. He’s quite handsome; when he was dating Gwen, she told him he had harmonious features. He’s aesthetically pleasing, that’s for sure.

“We still have the tutoring tomorrow, right? Right after the classes, yeah? I read Poe like you said. I don’t think I get it, though. It says in the summary on the back cover that these are horror stories, but they aren’t scary. Are they meant to not be scary? Why are they called horror then?”

“We shall discuss it tomorrow in detail.” Mr. Emrys smiles, openly and friendly, and this smile matches inside Arthur’s brain with the wild happy grin that teenager Merlin had on his face the day he saved a boy from fire. The two click together and melt into some new Merlin Emrys entity that Arthur doesn’t know what to call. “You should go home now. You father will be angry if he doesn’t find you there, and you two don’t need even more strain in your relationship, I believe.”

“Our relationship _is_ a strain just as it is,” Arthur mutters under his breath. “Who the bloody hell cares?”

Evidently, Mr. Emrys does. Maybe Coach Percival as well, but no one else. Isn’t it pathetic, caring about something when all the others don’t give a damn, even if they are the ones in trouble because of it?

Secretly, Arthur thinks it’s twenty five kinds of awesome, but he’s not keen on telling Mr. Emrys that.

Mr. Emrys makes a movement, clearly determined to get into his car and leave. Probably for another night of passionate lovemaking with Coach – stop, stop, so not thinking about it in detail. Just so not.

Arthur imagines Mr. Emrys half-naked, stretched across the bed, with his lips cherry bright from kisses and his eyes dazed with lust, writhing, shuddering, arching under Coach’s touch. Arthur’s own touch.

Not. Thinking.

“Wait!” The word escapes Arthur’s lips before he has a chance to process it and decide whether it’s a good idea to pronounce it or not. 

“What is it, Arthur?” Mr. Emrys looks back over his shoulder. There are shadows under his eyes. 

Did Coach keep him up all night, unable to get enough of this slim, supple body?

“I… you… I mean…” Arthur doesn’t know what he wants to say, and if he wants to say anything at all.

“Go home, Arthur,” Mr. Emrys says gently. “Get some rest. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He slips into the car – gracefully, quickly, as if he was slipping into the water of a swimming pool – and ignites the engine before Arthur can think of anything else to say and make him stay a little bit longer.

Arthur watches the car go and disappear around the corner.

* * *

“Poe isn’t really about horror,” Mr. Emrys says. “He is considered to be a representative of dark romanticism, and this is an entirely different matter.”

“So, the stories are really not meant to be scary, then,” Arthur nods. 

“Well, that depends on your definition of ‘scary’,” Mr. Emrys shrugs and smiles briefly. “Back when Poe was mainstream, they scared people. Nowadays people are spoilt with all kinds of media, and Poe’s dark tales don’t hold much power over them.”

“You sound like you’re fifty, and you’re generally displeased with life,” Arthur tries a little bit of teasing. He prods the ground he’s not sure he can step onto; he has to see how Mr. Emrys reacts, he needs that. Needs to see more of him, all of him, learn him by heart and keep him nearby forever.

These thoughts are disturbing and actually kind of terrifying.

Mr. Emrys laughs.

“I am old, compared to you. Though, I’m not generally displeased with life, usually I find it rather entertaining.”

“Today is not a usual day, then?”

“It is, to think of it. It’s just; my coffeemaker broke this morning, and without coffee life is a lot less entertaining. But it’s nothing I can’t survive.”

Mr. Emrys flashes an honest, bright smile, all for Arthur. Afternoon sunshine makes his skin glow and dances in his eyes, painting them gold instead of deep blue for a fraction of a second. He’s probably warm and soft to touch, despite all the sharp angles and shadows the sun highlights on his face.

Arthur wants to touch him so badly. His fingers itch, and his lips are dry.

He wonders what Mr. Emrys is like in the morning sunlight. Does it give his cheekbones a pinkish, dawn-like shade? Does he wake up immediately, cheerful and all wiry, or curse the alarm clock in a hoarse voice, hiding his face amongst pillows, all sleepy and pliant? He probably has a lot of pillows, skinny thing that he is; he needs softness around him so as not to cut the bed with his bones. His collarbones look like they are about to cut his shirt while he dresses.

“I’ll bring you a coffee from the machine in the hall,” Arthur offers. “It’s awful, but it might do.”

“Thanks, but don’t do it. Really. Let’s concentrate on Poe.”

“Yeah, sure.”

* * *

Creepy, Arthur thinks. Creepy pervert. That’s what he’s turned into. He’s sitting in the bushes outside Mr. Emrys’ house and watching him and Coach Percival making dinner. 

It’s cold, and it’s almost dark already. Mr. Emrys steals the chopped vegetables and cracked nuts, and alternately eats them himself or feeds Coach; Coach tries to look scowling and disapproving, but even Arthur can see how much he fails. 

Only creepy perverts watch people like that, right? Although, the CPs (creepy perverts) that Arthur’s seen in the movies don’t have a father who’s looking for them while they are sitting in the bushes, doing their creepy pervert-ish stuff, because this is lame, and movies don’t have lame perverts unless it’s a comedy. Well, Arthur is almost sure that Father isn’t looking for him, but if he, on the off chance, has already noticed the absence of supposedly grounded Arthur, then he’s bound to be initiating a search.

Although, Arthur’s ninety nine per cent sure that Father hasn’t noticed anything. It’s not like they tell each other in the evening what their days were like, or have mandatory family dinners every night, or Father checks on Arthur to give him a piece of advice and fatherly guidance. They both stick to their respective parts of the house, and it works just fine. Sometimes they don’t see each other for days, and once it was a week, during which Arthur went to school, and Father went there to work, and they both went home in the evening. They just never crossed paths.

Hopefully, this evening won’t be an exception in this respect.

Mr. Emrys puts a baking tin into the oven under Coach’s careful observance and smiles mischievously, not getting up from where he’s standing on his knees. He says something, still grinning, and Coach puts his hand in Mr. Emrys’ hair; he pulls him closer, and Mr. Emrys moves obediently. He looks up at Coach and lets out a breath, never breaking eye contact, almost touching Coach’s crotch through the jeans with his lips.

Arthur jerks away, like from sudden roaring flames. His face feels like it’s on fire, and his hands are trembling; he’s burning from the inside, burning painfully, endlessly, torn apart with want and need so intense that he can’t bear them, and with something powerful, something choking him; something very much like sadness.

He breathes shakily, clutching the branches of the bushes. The world is sort of swimming and blurring in front of him.

He lets the branches go and climbs over the small fence, out, in the street. The evening breeze stirs his hair and burns his cheek with damp cold. 

He runs, as fast as he can.

* * *

“Hey! Arthur, slow down! Mate, stop!”

Leon catches him by the elbow, almost making his arm go out of the socket. It’s painful and sobering.

“Where are you going? I though you were grounded... what are you doing out here anyway?”

“I am. Grounded, I mean.”

Arthur breathes deeply. He feels like he’s gonna throw up, once again.

“I just… I went for a jog, see? Exercise is good, I gotta keep in shape. The match with Mercia in a week and all. Sport. Health. Good.”

“You think I believe that for a second?” Leon’s holding a paper bag in one hand – he’s probably been shopping for some groceries for dinner or whatever. Just Arthur’s luck, to run into the only person in the town who’d be bothered enough to stop him and not to be tricked by his excuses. “What’s going on?”

Arthur doesn’t know what to say. He just stands there, shaking profoundly, willing his ragged breathing to get normal, and his eyes sting as Leon’s face takes the expression of worry and sympathy.

“I… he… I just… well… I’m not feeling well.”

“What happened to make you feel bad?”

Mr. Emrys happened, Arthur thinks. He happened and overturned Arthur’s life, and mind, and soul, and left them all overturned and wrecked.

“Nothing,” he says.

Leon raises an eyebrow, demonstrating that he’s totally not taking this shit for an answer. Arthur can’t blame him. Today doesn’t seem like a good day for acting.

“Well, there’s one thing,” he says. The words come out reluctantly, like they’ve been crumpled inside him for so long that now they don’t know how to get outside and what they are supposed to do there. “Nothing of great importance. It’s just bothering me.”

“What is it?”

“That’s… that’s… well, you know the Scheme, right? The plan I had.”

The realization dawns on Leon as he recalls that conversation with Arthur quite a while ago. 

“Right, the plan. The… thing you wanted to do ‘cause you didn’t like him. Mr. Emrys. Are you still going through with it? Fuck, you were serious then? Like, _serious_ serious?”

“As serious as they come, man,” Arthur says, and tries to smile, but his lips are trembling with tension and piercing sadness like the rest of him, and it probably doesn’t look all that convincing.

“And this plan…” Leon says slowly. “This scheme. It went wrong? How?”

Arthur shakes his head mutely. He doesn’t know what went wrong. He can’t explain it to himself, let alone Leon.

“Did he – did he do anything to you?”

“No! Fuck, no. He didn’t. He doesn’t know.”

“About what?” Leon asks, and that’s the right question to ask, even if Arthur still doesn’t know the answer.

“About anything,” Arthur says meekly. He hates being meek, but right now he can’t really help it.

Leon looks at Arthur intently and opens his mouth to say something, but closes it right away. He blinks a couple of times, and he looks like he doesn’t need to ask anything anymore.

“You stupid git,” Leon says. There’s acute pity in his eyes, the same kind that Mr. Emrys keeps for Arthur. Special reserved for miserable Pendragon types. “What’re you gonna do now?”

“I don’t know,” Arthur says. “I don’t know. I don’t know, don’t know, I don’t fucking know!”

He realises he’s shouting, and shuts up immediately. 

There’s nothing right and good with the world anymore, and it hurts so much.

Leon puts his paper bag on the pavement and reaches forward to hug Arthur. Leon smells like muffins and tea, and he doesn’t let Arthur go, even though Arthur’s stiff and unmoving like a plank.

“It’ll be alright,” Leon says quietly. “Trust me, my prince.”

There was this game when they were children: Leon was a knight, and Arthur was a prince, and they defeated the beasts of bushes, trees, and high grass with wooden sticks. They stopped playing it after they’d finished primary school, and it feels bizarre now to be called prince, even though he loved it back then, more than his own name.

Bizarre, but still strangely safe and comforting.

“It won’t be alright,” Arthur says stubbornly. “Ever.”

“We’ll see,” Leon says. “Shh. It’ll get better. You just watch it doing that.”

Arthur sobs into Leon’s shoulder, standing in the middle of the street, raw, and hurting, and vulnerable, and exposed in ways he didn’t know existed. It will really get better, he thinks. Because, honestly, it can’t get any worse.

* * *

Camelot is a small town. Stamp-size, as they say. There are two supermarkets, one police station, one train station, one hairdresser’s, three bookstores and one music store, two tiny parks, one cinema, and so on. It takes one two hours to walk from one end of the town to the other, if one’s not in any hurry. Arthur knows these cosy little streets by heart, like he knows that poem by Robert Frost that they learnt in the sixth grade; but just like he never really understood the poem with its confusing references to fire and ice as desire and hate, he doesn’t understand the streets. Not really. He understands enough to live there day by day, but this night is not about living, it’s more about surviving. He doesn’t know how to hide among them, to make himself scarce and safe at the same time.

He doesn’t want to go home – he’d rather sleep under the bridge than that. He can’t go to the only people willing to offer him shelter and at least some physical comfort – Mr. Emrys and Coach Percival (this is clearly, so clearly out of the question). And he can’t go to Leon’s because Leon’s mum will call Father to make sure it’s okay if Arthur stays the night. And while Arthur can’t picture the exact words Father would use in such a case, he’s adamantly sure those words wouldn’t be expressing agreement.

He’s got nowhere to go. Guess it’s a bench in the park for him. He won’t even be robbed – he’s got nothing worth the effort, he’s only got his clothes on him. He doesn’t even have his keys – he left home through his bedroom window.

“Come on,” Leon says, exasperated. “Don’t be a fucking drama queen, I’ll ask her not to call your Dad and she won’t.”

“Uh-huh,” Arthur says. “The second we go upstairs, she’ll be all over the phone to inform Father. They always think they know what’s best for me. Grown-ups. You’ll say to her: ‘But you promised not to!’, and she’ll say: ‘Leon, darling, that was for Arthur’s own good.’”

Leon can’t quite object to this statement: his mum is just as nosy as him, there’s no question who Leon got his mother-hen inclinations from.

“Well, she doesn’t have to know you’re there. I can let you in through the window. Come on, Arthur, stop being an idiot.”

“’M not an idiot,” Arthur mutters. It’s getting colder. The hypothetical bench becomes less and less attractive very quickly.

“Are too,” Leon retorts, just like he did when they were five years old.

“Am not!”

“Fine, whatever. Just come with me. I can give you the duvet since you’ll be sleeping on the floor. Deal?”

This is almost cheating, this asking questions about sleeping arrangements like Arthur’s already agreed, and the only thing they are arguing about is who gets to have the wonderfully warm duvet. Arthur contemplates saying “you can have your bloody duvet, I’m gonna get by on my own”, but a strong gust of wind sneaks under Arthur’s jacket and chills him to the bone.

One can never say that Arthur Pendragon lacks common sense and reasonable down-to-earthiness. Even if he’s a romantic with vivid imagination, he knows what’s needed for one’s survival. He even had a survival training course once.

Well, they learnt to make a fire back then, and to pick not-poisonous berries, and to put up tents, none of which Arthur’s going to need tonight. But that’s not the point. The point is that he knows when to be stubborn and when to budge under the pressure of dire circumstances. 

Oh, bugger it all.

* * *

There’s a moonbeam moving across the ceiling. Arthur watches it move again and again, unable to fall asleep.

Leon is out like a light, all starfish under a thin blanket. Arthur feels uncomfortably hot under the duvet; he tosses and turns as the moonbeam runs along the ceiling and the walls, melting into the glass of the bookcase, appearing again and again. Arthur wishes he knew how to switch off the damn thing – this illumination is not what a man needs to lull him into deep healthy sleep.

He wonders if Coach stays the night at Mr. Emrys’ place. Maybe they are sleeping right now, snuggled like two spoons in a drawer. They probably smell of sex and that thing they were baking earlier, whatever that was.

Arthur gets up and opens the window as wide as he can. He breathes the night air deeply, but the nagging feeling of nausea and hopelessness doesn’t let go. 

The moonlight is gentle and soft like Mr. Emrys’ voice – while it’s not something one can touch, one still thinks it’s soft. Arthur lets the moonlight glide over his fingers lying on the windowsill and the curve of his wrist; they seem almost unreal, unusually pale. Arthur wonders what Mr. Emrys looks like in the moonlight. He probably resembles a ghost, all transparent, luminous, unearthly.

Arthur lifts his hand and joins his fingers in a fist, trying to catch the moonlight. It slips through his grip, however tight, just like it should by every law of physics.

Just like Mr. Emrys does. Elusive; real, but existing in such a way that he is and always will be unattainable for Arthur. That’s just the way things work.

A splinter breaks off the windowsill and stings Arthur’s finger, and only then Arthur notices that he’s holding onto it so tightly it’s as if he’s drowning in the sea, and the sill’s the only thing helping him stay above the cold salty surface.

Maybe it is.

He knows now why he needs to catch Mr. Emrys so desperately; knows why Mr. Emrys’ stupid grin shines so brightly, why his eyes are so blue, why the world around Arthur has only ever been really alive and real in those moments when he and Mr. Emrys were next to each other.

He’s in love with Mr. Emrys. With Merlin. With both of them and with something more, something that connects the two and makes them Merlin Emrys, the annoying, moronic, wily, brainless, breathtaking bastard.

In love.

Fuck.

He breathes so quickly he starts hyperventilating. Just a bit.

He sits down on the floor, leaning back to the wall, and draws his knees closer to his chest, hiding every part of him from the moonlight dancing all over the floor.

He suddenly wishes his mother was there for him right now. But she’s long gone, and he only has Leon, who understands almost everything, but this almost is never truly enough.

When he’s numb from cold and sitting in an uncomfortable position, he crawls back under the duvet. Not that it helps him sleep, though.

He spends the rest of the night in feverish, sketchy thoughts that he doesn’t really remember in the morning.

* * *

Arthur enters the school building more reluctantly than he ever entered Nurse Morgan’s office to get a flu jab. He hates needles, so this comparison says something. 

There are people at school who hurt worse than needles – mainly, Mr. Emrys, but also Coach and Father, all of them lurking behind the corners, waiting for an opportunity to cause Arthur pain.

He doesn’t want to see any of the above, but halfway through the first class, Math, Catrina the Troll brings him a note from Father, which says: “Lunchtime. My office. Don’t you dare fail to appear.”

Also, the third class is literature – for which he isn’t ready at all, again – and after school there’s extra training: with the Mercia match coming up they can’t afford to relax too much. Arthur would like it if he was at least half as interested in the match as he’d been just yesterday, before he ran into Leon in the street.

He should be honest with himself: he actually does want to see Mr. Emrys. He doesn’t know anymore what to say or which tactics to try and which to leave out; the Grand Scheme is gone, dust in the wind, and there’s nothing else there, apart from dull ache and the everlasting nausea every time he thinks about Mr. Emrys and Coach’s domestic bliss as he saw it.

He should be a part of it, not Coach. Arthur’s sure Coach doesn’t feel as desperate as Arthur does, never. Coach has something Arthur wants, and it’s not fair. If only Arthur knew how, he’d make them break up at once, but he doesn’t, and the unfamiliar feeling of helplessness clenches his stomach in an iron fist as he walks into the literature classroom.

Mr. Emrys beams at him and greets him with a brief nod, just like he does for every other student.

Arthur looks at Mr. Emrys, plainly stares; unable to avert his gaze. He never knew his eyes could be hungry for the sight of someone the way his stomach is hungry after twelve hours without a single breadcrumb. He never suspected his whole body – every cell of it – could literally long for someone. He’s feeling too hot and too cold at the same time; there’s sudden sweat on his forehead.

Mr. Emrys fumbles with his books, lining them up for the lesson, and whistles something quietly. Arthur wishes he recognized the tune, but he’s never heard it before.

“Go sit down,” Leon says, squeezing Arthur’s shoulder. “Do you hear me? Go take your seat.”

Arthur startles and shrugs Leon’s hand off before nodding awkwardly and hurrying to his usual seat.

This is going to be a long lesson.

* * *

“The play explores a lot of essential themes, and we will cover them all briefly in several more classes.” Mr. Emrys perches on his desk, swinging his legs, instead of sitting on his chair or just standing up like most other teachers do. It doesn’t look really professional or, say, solemn, but Mr. Emrys doesn’t look like he has a problem with being less intimidating and authoritative than his older colleagues.

“What we start with is the most obvious one.” He smiles. Arthur looks away deliberately because watching Mr. Emrys smile hurts as if someone’s made a fire in his chest. He watches Morgana instead ‘cause he has to look at something. It’s not a bad sight; for all that she’s a vixen, she’s good-looking and has that bearing of charming bitchy confidence which Arthur was able to pull off himself some time ago, before… everything. 

Morgana looks fully entranced by Mr. Emrys, and she mouths the next words he says along with him:

“Love. _Romeo and Juliet_ is the most famous love story of all time…”

“Really?” Vivian bats her eyelashes. She’s wearing a black skirt and a white blouse; her hair’s in a braid, and she has a range of needle-sharp pencils in front of her. Clearly, Arthur thinks, she’s trying the hard-working clever approach, and at this point he has to bite his lip to suppress the hysterical giggling that threatens to break free; oh, Vivian, if only she knew how utterly this isn’t gonna work. Even overlooking the point that Mr. Emrys doesn’t do girls and doesn’t do his students, she’s your typical stupid blond who can’t pretend to be witty and clever to save her life. She proves this notion of Arthur’s by her next words: “I thought _Titanic_ was the top best and famous, no?”

Mr. Emrys smiles at her approvingly. Arthur doesn’t know if Mr. Emrys sees her attempts for what they are or not, but he surely wants to encourage her in this hard job of thinking.

“In fact, _Titanic_ resembles _Romeo and Juliet_ in its plotline, and it’s a clear reference to Shakespeare. The motif of tragic young love wasn’t tackled by the creators of _Titanic_ first.”

“Oh,” says Vivian. Arthur has to cut her some slack – she’d probably be more coherent than that if she wasn’t staring at Mr. Emrys’ lips and cheekbones. “That’s good. Yeah, I think it’s good.”

“It is, I guess.” Mr. Emrys is a merciful man – he leaves Vivian alone and addresses the whole class again. “The play is a manifestation of the first and true love gone tragic. Considering the historical context, both Romeo and Juliet were about your age. Despite that, they encountered what they couldn’t resist: enormous, all-consuming, eternal love. The force which has been sung ever since the human race appeared on Earth. It crushed them both, which you already know if you have read the play.”

Morgana raises her hand.

“But wasn’t it the social thing that made the ending tragic? I mean, their families being all vengeful, that was what stopped them from being happy? Say, if there wasn’t any hostility between the Capulets and the Montagues to begin with, than Romeo and Juliet could be happy together all they wanted, right?”

“This we will never know for sure, but thanks for a good question, Morgana.” Mr. Emrys nods. “Surely, the enmity between the two families was a crucial factor that made the story tragic implicitly. From the first time Romeo has ever laid his eyes on Juliet, the reader knows that it’s not going to end well because their families would never let it happen. But what actually made Romeo drink the poison? What made Juliet stab herself with Romeo’s dagger? What was the force that caused a lot of chaos, deaths, anger, and other unpleasant things, and didn’t let Romeo and Juliet be apart as all possible logical reasoning demanded? It was love. It was too big to bear. It was absolute. Something that every single one of you dreams of, though, I suppose.”

“Listening to you, one can think love is such a nasty thing, like plague or something,” Arthur says.

He didn’t mean to say that out loud. But he found, unexpectedly for himself and for everyone, that he did, so all he can do is go on despite the panicked warning looks Leon throws at him across the aisle.

“Or not the plague. Maybe like fresh paint on a bench: don’t touch, or you’ll never wash it off, and you’ll have to walk around with your backside decorated with bright stripes of some city-administration-approved colour, and there’s nothing good that can ever come out of it.”

“This is certainly an original metaphor, Arthur…” Mr. Emrys starts. He’s gonna brush Arthur off, change the topic smoothly, calm everyone down; in a couple of minutes they’ll forget about his bizarre outburst and move on. That’s a helping hand extended to Arthur – and to him alone, ‘cause Mr. Emrys himself can surely deal with any number of ‘original’ metaphors and still look smart and invincible – but Arthur doesn’t want to accept it. He feels like he hasn’t burst fully yet. There’s no blood and pieces of flesh on the walls, are there?

“Yeah, thanks,” Arthur interrupts. Leon’s eyes are very round and very panicked, like those of a bird in a trap, and he frantically makes a throat-cutting gesture, signalling to Arthur: leave it, fucking leave it, what the bloody hell do you think you’re doing? “What I meant to say, does it have to be this dangerous and unpleasant? Wasn’t Mr. Shakespeare exaggerating just a little bit? You know, for the audience’s sake. A tragic story sells better than a happy one, it tickles the spectators’ nerves better. Could there be so, that, say, one of us – me, or Leon here, or even Morgana, whoever – falls in love with someone they shouldn’t be in love with, but it ends happily?”

He’s looking straight at Mr. Emrys, and Mr. Emrys is looking back intently. Eye to eye, no attention to everyone else; there seems to be no one else around, as a matter of fact. The moment of perfect clarity. Arthur couldn’t be more transparent if he fell on his knees and produced a bouquet of flowers and an engagement ring out of thin air. 

Oh god, he thinks absent-mindedly, what have I done?

“No matter the age of those involved, falling in love with someone one shouldn’t never ends well,” Mr. Emrys says gently. His eyes aren’t gentle, though; they are sharp and tense, and his eyebrows are drawn together a bit in a hint of a frown. “There are some things one should just get over, however hard it may be. I’m sorry, Arthur.”

This last ‘sorry’ cuts deep; it sinks into Arthur’s flesh, and it starts to burn so strongly that he can’t breathe. The classroom starts swimming around him, and there’s a funny ringing noise in his ears.

The pain grows and grows, swallowing him, burning him from the inside, tearing him up in roaring flames, yes, roaring; he can feel his ribs crushing down like the means and joists of a house on fire and burying his heart under them.

It hurts more with every passing second, and there’s no way out.

Just to get over it. Only Mr. Emrys, while giving his kind piece of advice, forgot to teach Arthur how that can be done, and he can’t suss it out on his own, he just can’t, he has more urgent matters at hand. Like breathing, for starters.

“Is – Is that what you think?” he asks, hoarse.

“Yes, Arthur. That’s what I think.” Mr. Emrys is still gentle. Kind. Understanding and supporting.

Maybe Arthur could hold it together until the end of the lesson under the steely, unwavering blue gaze. But Vivian breaks the silence, saying petulantly:

“Sorry, just let me get it right: Arthur, have you just confessed that you love Mr. Emrys? Like, _love_ love? Full on wanna-have-hot-sex-with-him-and-live-with-him-happily-ever-after kind of love? You have, haven’t you?”

“God, Viv, you’re so thick sometimes,” Morgana mutters under her breath, but everyone hears her anyway, and there’s a wave of chuckles around the classroom.

“Yes, I have,” Arthur says, still looking at Mr. Emrys only. “You got a problem with that, Viv?”

“Not more than usual,” Vivian sounds really miffed now. “You were an idiot as a straight guy, you are a gay idiot now. No big deal from my point of view.”

Gay. Arthur didn’t think of what this whole mess says about his sexuality. But then again, a sexual orientation crisis, if there must be one, is the last of his current problems.

Mr. Emrys rubs his temples. He doesn’t look angry, or irritated, or embarrassed. He just looks tired and sad.

He probably gets that a lot, Arthur thinks. Long lines of students begging for his attention, wanking to his image at night, doing stupid thing in public, causing trouble and sadness, leaving these uneasy creases between his eyebrows.

It’s Arthur now who’s made Mr. Emrys’ lips tilt unhappily and made his shoulders slump; it’s him who’s wreaked the havoc around this slightly hunched lanky figure.

He should feel gleeful, glad that Mr. Emrys isn’t comfortable with this too, knowing he himself isn’t the only one suffering here – but there’s no glee, there’s just regret and guilt. He should never have brought this up, and not for the reasons that made Leon almost jump out of his seat in his silent plea for Arthur to shut up. He has upset Mr. Emrys, and, frankly speaking, he feels like shit about it.

He gets up and grabs his books and notes without looking. Something drops on the floor – probably his pencil – but he doesn’t care.

“I’m sorry,” he says. Now that the plain truth is out, causing damage, the pain has subsided to dull ache. Not burning, more like boiling steadily under his skin. Maybe he can even live with that. “I love you,” he says, and these words are very right and very wrong at the same time; they make Mr. Emrys purse his lips for a moment, but they roll off Arthur’s tongue so easily.

He’s probably been waiting for a long time to say them. He just didn’t know that he was. Waiting, that is.

“I love you,” he says again, simply because he can now and he may not be able to later. “I’m sorry. Truly, I am.”

He leaves the classroom, and shuts the door after himself at the predictable “Arthur, wait!”

There’s nothing to wait for now, right? 

Pretty much nothing at all.

* * *

Arthur walks through the empty corridors like a blind man; there are plants, and walls, and windowsills, and benches, and he hits them all on his way with his shoulders and hips, disoriented, almost like he’s drunk. 

There’s no one out here yet, but soon it will be a break, and by the moment these corridors fill with students, everyone will already have learnt the news. Modern technology is convenient for gossip like that.

Arthur stumbles across the hall and trips over his own legs in attempts to step down the porch. He falls awkwardly face-first, all reflexes on falling, taught by Coach Percival over the last few years, forgotten now.

He throws up right there, at the porch, under the scorching sun and with a stray crow watching him curiously.

His head is spinning, his stomach is still churning fruitlessly, and he feels empty, hollow, and at the same time full of ache so needy and desperate that he doesn’t know what else he can do about it. There’s bile on his tongue. It tastes like rejection.

He just sits there for a while. There’s nowhere to go and nothing to do, and, to be honest, there’s no point.

“Stand up,” someone says tentatively. “Arthur, hey.”

Leon. Ever the shoulder to cry on. Maybe Arthur would even do just that if he felt up to it, but he doesn’t feel up to anything. 

“Come on, stand up.” Leon takes him by his hand and yanks him upright, almost making his shoulder go out of its socket.

“Wanker,” Arthur says, without heat.

“Look who’s talking,” Leon mutters under his breath. “Let’s go. My folks are at work, there’s no one at home. Let’s clean you up, you’ve got vomit on your knee.”

He pulls, and Arthur follows obediently. 

“What am I gonna do?” he asks as they leave the schoolyard. It comes out helpless and lost, and he doesn’t really care. “Leon, what am I gonna do now?”

“You’re gonna take a shower and eat something. These are compulsory. Then… anything. Whatever you like. What do you wanna do?”

“Nothing,” Arthur says.

“Then you’ll do nothing. Maybe you can sleep. My mum got some pills, they are herbal, and they help her with her insomnia.”

Arthur thinks of some witty, stiff-upper-lip comeback. Or at least a dramatic one, like “can I just crawl under the sofa and die of self-pity?” or “if I take a lot of those pills, will I die?” But saying this requires far more effort than he can produce right now.

Probably he should make an effort. Everyone tells him to, but he never really makes one, does he? Otherwise they’d stop saying it and looking at him disappointedly, making him feel like there’s something hot, sleazy and disgusting stirring under his skin, something like shame and despair.

Only Leon never did that. He never said anything about efforts. Back then, when they were playing the knight-prince game, Arthur’s sword-stick used to get tangled in the grass at first, and Leon always just helped him get it out. Like Arthur had a right to be weak, lame, mistaken, and if he was, he’d still be a prince, despite the fact that he was actually not one.

So Arthur finds himself saying quietly:

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome, mate,” Leon says matter-of-factly.

* * *

The shower actually does Arthur some good: firstly, Arthur doesn’t stink of his own vomit any more, and secondly, while he stands under hot steady stream, the thick steam covers the mirror, and leaves drops of water on the walls of the shower cabin, and somehow finds its way into Arthur’s head, wrapping itself around Arthur’s thoughts and calming them down. He feels like he’s drugged when he finally emerges from the bathroom; he’s sleepy, heavy, senseless and thoughtless. He felt like that when he woke up from anaesthesia after his appendix had been removed eight or nine years ago; he remembers lying in the hospital and staring at the ceiling and not thinking at all.

He sits down on Leon’s bed and wraps himself up more tightly in Leon’s dad’s bathrobe. Leon himself is sitting on the floor next to Arthur’s legs and going through a pack of potato crisps with bacon in such concentration, as if it’s the most important thing in his life.

“So,” Leon says. “Does that mean you’re gay now?”

Arthur shrugs, not really caring that Leon can’t see the gesture.

“No, really?”

“I don’t know,” Arthur snaps. “I didn’t think of it, alright? I don’t know. If you asked me a month ago what I thought of gay people, I’d say I didn’t think of them. I had more interesting things to do, you know?”

“What do you think of them – you – whatever? I mean, now? You’ve always dated girls.”

“Everyone dated girls. It’s what you do, innit? And it’s not like I was ever checking out the footie team in the locker room, you know. I… had other things to do.”

“Like making up Grand Schemes, uh-huh,” Leon says.

“Shut up,” Arthur hisses in a sudden blinding fit of rage; but it goes away like sea waves licking the shore, immediately, and he’s in the middle of the steam again, tranquil and apathetic. 

“Are you checking them out now?” Leon giggles. Honestly, like a fucking girl. If there’s a poofter in the room, it’s certainly not Arthur. 

“Tosser. You know I’m not.” Arthur lies down and hugs Leon’s pillow. It’s soft and cool under his shower-heated skin.

“I don’t know if I’m gay,” he confesses to the pillow. “I don’t know if I’m straight. I just… I love Mr. Emrys. That’s it. What does it matter if I’m gay, anyway? Are you a homophobe, or what?”

“Idiot,” Leon says. “Want some crisps?”

At the prospect of food Arthur’s stomach does a rather unpleasant flip-flop.

“I think I’ll pass.”

They sit in silence for a couple of minutes, and then Leon says:

“I made you some tea. It’s on your right, on the nightstand.”

Arthur nods into the pillow. He knows that Leon can’t see it, and he knows that Leon sees anyway.

* * *

“I can’t stay here,” Arthur says. “Your mum and dad will soon be back.”

“They don’t mind you.”

“They’ll tell Father. And I really don’t want to talk to him, you know.”

Leon sighs.

“Where the hell do you plan to go, then?”

Arthur ties the laces of his trainers and stands up. 

“Dunno. Maybe I’ll come back here later, climb through the window, if it’s alright with you. I just, well, I need some time alone.”

“I get it,” says Leon, serious and sad like a fucking grown-up all of a sudden. “Just… don’t do anything stupid, okay?”

“Me and stupid? That’s a match made in heaven, mate, how can I not do it?” Arthur shows his teeth in a smile that comes out more angry than cheerful.

He feels like he’s being torn from the inside, and Leon’s sympathy, however appreciated, makes him hurt more, because he doesn’t need it. There’s nothing he needs from anyone; the only thing he wants is Mr. Emrys, but Arthur can’t get him, and it’s like a razor in his guts, tearing, cutting, shredding into pieces.

He needs some fresh air, probably.

He doesn’t really plan on coming back to hide under Leon’s wing from the big bad world, but he keeps that bit of information to himself.

* * *

It’s getting colder as sun goes down. Arthur finds himself sitting on the small wooden fence surrounding Mr. Emrys’ house and breathing on his own fingers because they are freezing. The sun hides behind the house, and the wild grass and flowers that seem to be thoroughly untended all year round smell so sweetly. They’re dying, Arthur thinks. It’s autumn, they’ll get frozen to death soon, and they smell like they know it, so strongly, giving everything they can until they eventually cannot.

That’s again one of those creepy perverted things that Arthur does around Mr. Emrys. Who probably wouldn’t like the idea of one of his students sitting out here and watching his shadow occasionally move behind the closed curtains, if Arthur’s entirely honest with himself, but then again, what one doesn’t know can’t hurt one.

It’s so pathetic. Arthur feels pity and some kind of twisted fraternal affection towards all creeps of the world. If anyone knew how desperate and crazy you should be to do something like that, maybe they wouldn’t be so hasty to judge?

On the other hand, not every creep is as harmless as Arthur. Well, relatively harmless, Arthur corrects himself, remembering the projector incident. Although, no human being suffered from that incident if you don’t count the general moral downcast after the town was left without a working cinema, right? 

Mr. Emrys walks out quietly, and for a brief moment Arthur doesn’t recognize his movements as something new, his eyes used to the stirring of branches and grass in the wind, and the dancing splashes of colour on the horizon during sunset, and the birds flying, and the clouds floating. Mr. Emrys fits in the picture, which is not really surprising: it’s his house, after all, his place, his space, tuned to its owner like a musical instrument.

He is wearing washed out jeans, a yellow t-shirt and a shapeless cardigan. Its colour painfully reminds Arthur of his own vomit from earlier today. It’s all so ridiculous that it’s perfect. Arthur hates the things, especially the cardigan, but he wouldn’t change Mr. Emrys one bit, even if he could.

Fuck, Arthur thinks.

Mr. Emrys sits down on the fence next to Arthur, hiding his hands in the large cardigan sleeves.

“I knew you’d be here sooner or later,” Mr. Emrys says quietly.

“I didn’t know, how come you did?” Arthur asks, because he may as well ask now and prompt Mr. Emrys to talk more. He’d like to listen; to anything, even if it makes the razor in his gut spin and make pirouettes, like it’s preparing to take part in an ice-skating contest.

“You don’t let go of what you want so easily. I think I got to know you a little since September.”

“Fine,” Arthur says.

Mr. Emrys doesn’t say anything for a while, and Arthur watches him sideways, catches the play of light and shadow on his features, and the way his hair is pitch black, and the still unhappy downward tilt of his lips.

God, Arthur wants to kiss this tilt away from these lips, he wants it so badly, he could sell his birthright and whatnot for it, but he can’t.

He can’t, he mustn’t, and this silent fight with himself makes Arthur feel truly exhausted.

You’re stronger, some part of him says. You two are alone. You can do anything you want right now. Rip the god-awful cardigan off, for starters; what can he do to stop you, recite some pacifist shite a la that Remarque guy?

Fuck off, Arthur says to this part. Fuck the hell off and don’t come back.

“I don’t know what I can say to you,” Mr. Emrys says, completely unaware of the grave danger he has just avoided. “There are many reasons why I can’t and won’t look at you in a sexual way, and they all are valid. I believe in them, Arthur. My own understanding of what’s right and what’s not; my relationship with Coach Percival – he’s special and precious to me like no one has ever been before; also, there’s my job that I genuinely love and don’t want to lose.”

Arthur listens to him; mute, unable to breathe, numbed by the acute, piercing, merciless feeling of losing something he’s never owned in the first place.

“It’s not your fault. Nothing is your fault. Neither having misplaced your affection, nor me unable to do anything with your feelings but to hurt them over and over again; these things are not something one can control, after all. You’re clever, brave and actually sensitive under the cruel spoilt brat disguise, and I’m sure one day you’ll make someone very happy, Arthur. But that someone's never going to be me.”

Something snaps in Arthur; he can hear it crunching under these words. Precise, crystal clear words.

He can never be with Mr. Emrys. He’s just a student having an inappropriate crush, a stupid kid wishing to get something he’s not supposed to have, not in this universe. Not in Mr. Emrys’ universe, and that one is the only one that matters. 

He can’t deal with it. There’s a huge gap between what he has and what he needs like air, an abyss he can’t cross. He can’t help but fall into it, and it’s dark and very cold inside, and it feels like dying. Arthur has never died before but this is what it feels like.

“No!”

He gets up in a jerky motion; he doesn’t know if it was fast or overly slow, everything’s kind of wobbly and fuzzy and wrong, wrong, wrong.

“No!” He clutches onto Mr. Emrys’ shoulders, warm and fragile under the clothes like a bird’s wings. “No, you can’t… you can’t do this to me!”

He shakes Mr. Emrys; Mr. Emrys’ head falls back for a second, exposing white slender throat, and the blood in Arthur boils, fizzing under his skin. 

“Arthur, stop.”

“I love you,” Arthur whispers. Everything is blurred, and the only thing’s that’s real is Mr. Emrys’ warmth and solidness under Arthur’s fingers. “I love you!” he shouts.

“Arthur, you’re hurting me, stop!”

“Don’t do this to me!” Arthur shouts again; he’s out of breath but it doesn’t matter. “You’re killing me, killing me, stop it, don’t do this to me, no, no, no!”

There’s a sudden iron grip on Arthur’s forearms, and he no longer holds onto Mr. Emrys, it’s his turn to thrash to no avail in someone’s hands, so much stronger than his own. 

He sees red, and he keeps screaming until his throat is raw and his tongue tastes like blood:

“No, no, no, no..!”

“Calm down,” someone says. Arthur knows that voice but he can’t quite place it, not now. “Arthur. Arthur!”

The fight goes out of Arthur in one instant. It’s like a candle put out. His knees buckle, and he slips on the ground, free from those strong hands, and something scorching hot runs down his cheeks.

He’s crying, and as soon as he understands it, there’s no stopping it. He sobs, hiding his face behind his hands; the tears won’t stop running as if there’s the whole lot of them that is given to Arthur for a lifetime. His shoulders are trembling as he tries to keeps the sobs silent and less mighty, but he can’t do anything at all about this, and that’s the weakest thing that has ever happened to him.

He is strong. He’s always been strong. He never cried, or at least not since he can remember himself. His body seems to be taking revenge for all those years before Mr. Emrys. That’s what it’s like: before Mr. Emrys and with him.

Arthur knows that there must be not ‘with’, but ‘after’, but he can’t make himself even think it. It’s too much, and he’s got his hands full – quite literally – without it.

God, he thinks, it hurts so much, why does it hurt so much, please, somebody, stop the hurting, please, I can’t take it any more.

“Merlin,” he exhales. “Mer-lin. Please.”

Merlin saved a child from a fire, right? Surely he can save Arthur from hurting. Nobody else can, but it’s so easy for Merlin, he can save Arthur and smile and keep him sane.

He can, but he won’t.

The tears go and go down; they cling to Arthur’s chin before falling off, sneak into his mouth as he opens it to breathe, soak his fingers pressed tightly to his eyes. They just don’t stop.

“Shh,” he hears. “Don’t cry. Shh. It will be alright. I promise.”

Somebody hugs him, and Arthur recognizes the smell – cheap coffee and toothpaste, freshness and safety. Merlin smells like safety. 

It’s a hug meant for fixing, not loving, and that’s precisely why it doesn’t work. 

“Shouldn’t we call someone?” Arthur remembers who this voice belongs to. Coach Percival. Right. “What shall we do?”

Coach sounds shaken and lost. It’s only logical that he didn’t expect what he’s just seen – he’s the one lucky guy who doesn’t get to feel like that. If he even realizes how bloody lucky he is; he must have been born to a bunch of doting fairy godmothers.

“Is there a psychological ambulance with some gear to glue back a broken heart?” Mr. Emrys chuckles softly, not letting Arthur go. “I suspect there’s no one out there right now who can help him apart from us – although, considering the circumstances, I don’t think we are the best candidates for that either. Well… let’s get him inside. Arthur? Get up. Stand up. It’s cold out here. Coach and I, we’ll make you a cup of hot tea, what do you think of that?”

Arthur doesn’t really think anything of anything, but Mr. Emrys asks him and he does as asked by this soft clear voice. His knees – and the rest of him, for that matter – are still too weak, and he only half-heartedly pretends to walk while Coach almost carries him to the house.

He thinks it must feel humiliating, but he’s too tired to feel it. So he just lets it happen, because honestly, why not.

* * *

It’s dark in the living-room, but some light comes in from under the door: Mr. Emrys and Coach are still up. They are in the kitchen, talking about something quietly. Arthur can’t understand the words, lying here on the couch. The blanket he was given itches and smells like old wool – no one has used it for a while, apparently. But it’s very, very warm, and it’s so heavy that it renders him pretty much trapped. Arthur thinks that they are probably talking about him, but to eavesdrop he should get out from under the blanket and be stealthy, and he doesn’t want to. He’s in a position where he doesn’t have to talk or move or think – he was told to sleep, actually, but he doesn’t really have to do that as well. He’s quite content to be here, in the dark, alone, under his woollen shelter stroke prison.

He hears the sound of tap water running for a couple of minutes, and then there are cupboard doors opening and closing. And the low murmur of a conversation again, even quieter now. Arthur can picture in his mind Coach Percival hugging Mr. Emrys from behind, and kissing the top of the head that’s trustingly leant against his shoulder, and saying that all problems will be solved one way or another.

Yeah, that’s probably exactly what’s happening. Arthur’s sure of one thing – he doesn’t want to eavesdrop and peep on that. He’s not strong enough yet to face it in reality.

He’s strong enough to do something else, though. He can at least be a decent person for once in his life and solve one of Mr. Emrys’ current problems, seeing as he’s the embodiment of said problem.

He still loves Mr. Emrys so much that it stings where Arthur’s heart should be, and his eyes start hurting all over again despite the fact that they stay totally dry, having run out of tears. And he got the one he loves in a mess that he is. 

He’s an inconvenience, a liability, a burden, and that’s the last thing he wants to be for Mr. Emrys.

He hears steps in the corridor, and the door of the living-room opens a little bit; Arthur recognizes the silhouette of Coach Percival – must be checking on Arthur – and shuts his eyes pretending he’s asleep. He’s not good at it – he’s more often forced to pretend he’s wide awake and paying attention – but it’s dark, and Coach doesn’t linger in the doorway, evidently not suspecting anything… say, untoward and hurrying to join Mr. Emrys in the bedroom.

At this point Arthur resolutely stops thinking about Coach, Mr. Emrys and bedroom together and concentrates on the things he has to do.

At first he lies still, waiting for an hour after there are no more sounds and no more light. Then he stands up, shivering from the chill in the air – after the blanket it feels like he’s mindlessly turned on the shower and there’s no hot water.

His jacket in on the chair, and he puts it one without zipping up – the sound may be heard in the total silence. His trainers are in the hall, and he laces them up without looking. He moves around slowly, carefully; he can’t see anything but he touches gently, trying his best not to drop or break anything and to avoid tripping over some trinket. It feels eerie, like a dream; he breathes as quietly as he can, and his movements are graceful – at least that’s what it feels like. His head is empty to the point of ringing after the unstoppable tears of tonight, and it might be what it feels like to be drunk, or high. Nothing is real until he touches it, and he only does that to let go and to walk away soundlessly. 

The door is locked, but it’s only one lock which is opened without a key. Arthur winces when there’s a distinct clicking sound, but it seems not to have disturbed anyone, and he slips out unnoticed – which fact gives him both satisfaction and some vague disappointment.

There’s moon outside, only a slice of it. It’s getting smaller night by night, Arthur knows, and soon there will be a moonless night; and then a new moon appears, ready to grow and shine.

Of course, it’s always one and the same, there are no actually new moons appearing out of the blue, Arthur knows that much Astronomy, but it’s a good analogy.

He hops over the fence – his knees try to betray him and buckle from the effort but he doesn’t let them. There are some efforts he _really_ has to make.

He walks through the empty streets of sleeping Camelot – on and on, until he walks out of the city. A mile more, and he walks past the sign that says laconically: “Welcome to Camelot!”

The dawn finds him quite far away from the sign, exhausted and thirsty. He doesn’t know where he actually is, but this is the road that leads to Mercia, and Mercia is by the sea (that’s why one of Kay’s favourite jokes during matches with Mercia High is to shout that someone here stinks of fish). He can find some job on a ship or just sneak onto one, whatever. The main thing is, he’ll leave the country to never return.

He’ll never trouble anyone here again, and they won’t be able to torture him anymore. Win-win situation, from Arthur’s point of view.

He leaves the road and goes into the woods, not very deep, just finding a nice spot to sleep. That’s where his survival course comes in handy: he remembers there could be dangerous animals and dangerous poachers around, but he’s of no interest for the latter and can’t make himself worry about the former. 

So he sleeps on the ground, with his jacket under his head. The last thing he acutely misses before falling fast asleep is that blanket. Or Leon’s duvet. Just something warm and safe.

But there’s nothing like that in his vicinity, and he makes do with what he has.

* * *

Arthur stops in front of the doors, bracing himself. 

The vomit is long gone from the ground next to the porch, and the crow isn’t here, but this doesn’t really change anything. In fact, he’d prefer if the crow came back and tried to peck out his eyes – he’d have to go to the hospital then and wouldn’t have to go to school.

Father is watching him from the car. Arthur feels the cold disapproving glare on his back.

He was caught embarrassingly quickly: the police found him on the road in the late afternoon yesterday. They couldn’t not do that after Father had personally asked Chief Aredian to put maximum effort into finding his garbage of a son.

Well, Arthur’s not sure that was the exact wording that Father used when talking to Chief Aredian, but that was what Father told Arthur late at night when the latter was handed over. Arthur can’t remember Father being so angry ever before, and can’t remember himself so indifferent to it.

They were in the kitchen, the kettle was whistling and whistling, and Father crashed a glass in his hand as he was telling Arthur that teenage rebellion is not unheard of, but he wouldn’t take it from his own son, and that he hoped that Arthur’s disgusting manifestation of unnatural inclinations had been an intricate attempt at attracting attention.

Arthur thinks he understands what is meant by these long and almost meaningless words. But he can’t bring himself to care, or to be ashamed, or to want to make it up to Father somehow.

He reaches inside, where he once had all those things, and it feels burnt out and dead.

He can still feel the glare, though. 

Arthur pushes the doors. He’ll leg it again as soon as he can, but for now he should go in and attend the classes. Although, finding out at first which ones they are having today would be quite handy.

“Hi,” he says to Kay absent-mindedly, walking past.

“Don’t talk to me, faggot,” says Kay.

Arthur stops.

“What did you say?”

“I said, fuck off, pansy.” Kay shoves him into the lockers, and it hurts. In fact, it beats the air out of Arthur.

This is a new feeling, and Arthur doesn’t like it.

“Are you nuts? What the fuck are you doing?”

“What the fuck are you doing, taking it up your arse, huh?” Kay’s look is heavy and threatening. Also there’s pain. Arthur recognizes pain, he’d know that anywhere. “You’re disgusting. Make sure you keep away from me, or I’ll beat the crap out of you.”

“What?”

“Are all of you faggots that dumb?”

Kay spits into Arthur’s face, his own twisted with scorn. Arthur feels the thick spit rolling down his cheek slowly.

He wants to scream until his throat is raw, he wants to take Kay apart molecule by molecule; his hands are trembling with a wish to flood the floor with Kay’s blood. The spit is leaving a sticky wet trail on his skin, and it’s sickening.

He shuts his eyes tightly and inhales deeply. When he opens his eyes again, Kay is gone.

* * *

Leon finds him there, next to the lockers, sitting on the floor. It’s cold and hard to sit on, and Leon’s steps are loud in the empty corridor; the sound vibration goes through the whole Arthur’s body, and he frowns at the sensation.

“What the hell are you doing here? The bell rang six minutes ago.”

“Kay called me a fag and spit on me. What do you think I’m doing?” Arthur studies the opposite wall. It definitely needs repainting, it’s all… blotchy.

Leon stands there for a few seconds, taking the information in, and then sits down beside Arthur.

“He’s a jerk. He’s always been,” Leon says. It doesn’t sound like a lame attempt at consolation, it’s just Leon being his little Captain Obvious self. It still doesn’t console Arthur, though.

“Is it the part when you tell me that homophobic jerks are beneath me and advise me to go to physics with my head held up high?”

“It’s math now, but yeah, I…”

“Fuck your advice,” Arthur says. He’s just so tired of all this. Why can’t it just end somehow? A bunch of terrorists who’d take Kay as a hostage would be really nice right now. Or Arthur could just wake up and find out that it’s summer vacation, and he doesn’t have to see anyone, talk to anyone, listen to anyone’s advice or spiteful bullshit.

God, he’d love to ask Leon to lend him those herbal pills, the more the better. But for all Leon’s naivety, he’s not dumb, so Arthur contemplates getting something from other sources. 

Although, it doesn’t have to be pills. There are ropes and belts. Roofs, and bridges, and razors, and stuff. An awful lot of opportunities, to think of it.

Pills are still Arthur’s favourite, though. They are the most peaceful and quiet, and there’s nothing he’d like more than a bit of peace right now.

There is only so much that a person can take, and he feels like he has already taken _too_ much.

“It would be so much easier if you could unlove him,” Leon says wistfully. “You know, for you. You wouldn’t give a damn about Kay’s homophobic shite, and you wouldn’t try to run the hell away, if it was just a crush. I assume that’s a bit more than that.”

“A bit, yeah.”

“But he can’t love you back, Arthur.”

“What the fuck do you know about him, or me, or anything?” Arthur snaps, but his voice lacks any hostile passion which would probably be able to turn Leon off.

“You’ve got, like, seven or eight years difference, right? You remember, when last spring I had to pick up Beth, my cousin, from school every day? There were family troubles and all, well, you know. The point is, one of the girls from Beth’s class had that huge crush on me. It’s like, I’m sixteen and she’s eight or nine, and she’s all over me, and she says she loves me every five seconds or so, every single day when I show up to collect Beth. You know, it was… flattering in some way, but otherwise – just creepy. She’s a kid, and I’m, like, an adult next to her. I could never be interested because… just because. You know. I don’t even have to look for arguments, right? It’s so awful and ridiculous to imagine me and her going all couple-y, that it doesn’t even need any arguments against it, it’s just never gonna happen ‘cause it’s never gonna happen. Now what I wanna say… I don’t really know anything about him, or anything. But he can think of it just the same way. Teacher isn’t a funny name for a mate, they are, like, worlds apart from us. You know.”

“Dude, I appreciate you sincerely making me even more miserable when I thought I’d already hit the rock bottom, but will you please shut up? Or I may do something that you, or I, or both of us will regret later.”

They sit in silence for a while, and Arthur entertains himself, imagining angry Ms. Jones. Small, gentle and frail as she is, she can almost literally kill a misbehaving student with one vicious glare; no one dares to miss her classes without a good reason. Pity that Arthur couldn’t care less right now.

“I’m sorry,” Leon says quietly. “I just really, really, really want to help you. Fuck me if I know how.”

“Well, you’re not helping,” Arthur says. There’s sour, sharp taste of bile on his tongue. 

He just wants it all to end, honestly.

“You should probably go to class,” he says. “Tell Ms. Jones I have stomach-ache or something, put down the home task for me and whatever else. Will you?”

It sounds reasonable. It could even work under slightly different circumstances.

“Ah-hah. And what are you planning to do while I apologize to Ms. Jones? Get some pills from nurse Morgan for your non-existent ache?”

“It was worth a shot,” Arthur mutters. He doesn’t intend for Leon to hear that, but Leon is nosy like a nosy thing from the land of nosy things.

“What was? Your lame excuse to make me leave you alone here?”

“That’s a good idea, actually,” Arthur sighs. “Why don’t you live me alone?”

“The hell I will.” Leon sits up straighter and looks at Arthur intently. “What are you going to do? What is it you can’t do with me around?”

“God, will you just shut up!” Arthur finds himself yelling. Desperation is a heavy bulge inside his chest, it doesn’t let him breathe properly, and he doesn’t want to be seen like this – destroyed, devastated, humiliated, pathetic. Not even by Leon. “Shut the fuck up and leave me alone, you’re making everything worse, worse, just worse! Shove your fucking pity up your arse, I don’t want it!”

Leon slaps Arthur across the face.

It’s painful and unexpected and offensive enough to make Arthur cut his diatribe short.

“Don’t yell at me, you idiot,” Leon says calmly. “And don’t think you’ll get rid of me that easily.”

Arthur breathes quickly, unevenly; his slapped cheek is still burning, and it feels so utterly unfair that to all the pain inside some outside pain has just been added, and it’s humiliating too, much more so than an honest punch or even a shove into the lockers. He can’t think of anything to say or do, and he wishes he could just die right here and now, without having to do anything for it, or maybe the earth would swallow him whole, so he doesn’t have to deal with the overwhelming pain and emptiness.

“Come here,” Leon says gently.

Arthur tries to find traces of pity in Leon’s voice but there are none.

“Come here.”

Leon hugs him, and he hides his face in the crook between Leon’s neck and shoulder. He wishes he could cry, if only to ruin Leon’s shirt, but the tears were all spent the day before yesterday, as well as anger. There’s just… nothing left. Arthur’s pretty sure he can touch this nothing if he tries.

They sit on the floor in the empty hallway. There are noises coming from behind the closed doors of the classrooms, gentle lull of equations, irregular verbs, dates, facts, formulas, all mixed into one indiscernible stream; there’s also Leon soft breathing, and his shampoo and fresh sweat scent.

Arthur clenches Leon’s shirt in his fists and sighs deeply.

Leon just holds him silently and doesn’t let go. 

* * *

The spicy sauce stings Arthur’s lips – they are chapped for some reason. He reaches for his Coke, but the sweet bubbly liquid really isn’t helping. 

It’s cold today, so cold that he feels numb despite his warm hoodie and hot hamburger in his hands. The sky is clouded, and Arthur thinks there might be rain any minute.

He actually spends at least ten minutes contemplating the weather, although he couldn’t care less if there was a tornado right in front of him. He feels Leon’s intense stare and pretends to be really interested in the hamburger and the sky. The hamburger is nice, though, even if the sauce is a pain in the arse; Arthur doesn’t remember when was the last time he ate, what with the rejection, and the unfortunate running away, and the thorough yelling from Father, and everything.

The police gave him some tea from thermos when they found him, but apart from that all his memories are kind of a blur.

“You’ll get into trouble,” Arthur says eventually “You shouldn’t’ve skipped the classes.”

“To hell with the classes.” Leon licks the sauce from his own hamburger from his fingers. “You and I both needed to get some fresh air.”

Arthur nods, mutely. He doesn’t really know what to do and what to think of what happened, and he’s sort of grateful that Leon took the lead and even went so far as to leave a note for Father with Catrina the Troll saying that Arthur and Leon himself will not be present for the rest of the school day, and their phones will be off, and not to worry. It’s not like Father would be worrying anyway, he’s probably just furious, but Leon doesn’t really understand that, and Arthur never tried to explain how this actually works. It feels too… intimate, for the lack of a better word, even if it’s Leon.

Secretly, Arthur hopes Father will be so angry that he’ll have a stroke or something, and that will make him lay off of Arthur for a while, won’t it? Just until Arthur figures out what to do.

The tips of Leon’s ears are turning red from the cold wind. Arthur thinks that it’s probably what Mr. Emrys’ ears looked like this morning while he was coming to work, just a bit funnier cause Mr. Emrys’ ears are bigger.

Maybe not. Maybe he wore a beanie or something. Arthur wouldn’t know, only Coach Percival would.

There’s dull, somehow exhausted pain in his chest when he thinks all that. He wouldn’t mind if he could claw it out of his chest together with some flesh and internal organs because it’s unbearable. The word ‘unbearable’ actually gains a whole new meaning – it’s something one thinks one can’t bear but, mysteriously, they go on breathing and living, and it’s evident and impossible at the same time like the Möbius strip.

“I’m not coming back to school,” Arthur says. The sauce-stained napkin in his hands is now useless as he’s just finished eating, but there’s no waste bin in sight so he starts folding it. 

“You mean, today?”

“I mean, at all. I… I can’t handle it. Neither Father, nor Kay, nor…”

“Oh.”

Leon steals a sip of Arthur’s Coke before saying anything coherent.

“You can transfer. Like, to Mercia, or wherever. There’s Northumbria High too, and that boarding expensive one, Albion. Or something else.”

“Father won’t have it.”

“Why?”

Arthur shrugs. He’s really, really not in the mood for explaining.

“Do you still want to run away to Mercia?” Leon asks.

“Pretty much,” Arthur says. While it’s not entirely truth, he can’t exactly tell Leon what he was thinking about earlier today. It’d only cause a major freak-out on Leon’s part. “I hate this place. Even Mercia is better.”

Leon starts folding and unfolding his own napkin too.

“So you’re sure you can handle whatever you’ll face out there?” he sounds doubtful. “I mean, you’re not even of age yet, but you’ll need a job, and somewhere to live, and whatnot.”

“I’ll think of something.” Arthur shrugs, hoping it’ll work.

Only it doesn’t because it’s Leon here.

“Bullshit, mate,” Leon declares. “You always plan everything. I can swear that you even pee on schedule, I don’t believe if you were seriously thinking about taking off, you wouldn’t think every single detail through, up to a wart on the nose of your future hypothetical landlady.”

Arthur snorts against his will. He does have a thing for planning which causes the whole Camelot High football team suffer through hours of discussing strategies.

Well, caused. Arthur’s sure he doesn’t want to ever play shoulder to shoulder with Kay and under Coach Percival’s supervision again.

He used to love football some time ago. The only thing he loves now is Mr. Emrys.

How the mighty have fallen.

“To be honest,” Leon says, “I don’t think running away is a good idea, dude.”

“What do you suggest, then?”

Leon thinks for about a minute before answering.

“I don’t know.”

They sit in silence again. Arthur feels dizzy from greasy hot food, and his nose is numb from cold. His phone is off, but he’s sure when he turns it on again he’ll find a lot of calls and angry voicemails from Father. Maybe he shouldn’t turn it on again.

“I think you should find some help, dude. Go talk to Ms. Mithian, for example. She’s nice. When I broke up with Morgana, I was a mess, and she talked me through a lot of stuff.”

Arthur bristles because it’s exactly what Mr. Emrys suggested, and he doesn’t want this reminder or any other, for that matter.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not a psycho. I don’t need a shrink to sort myself out.”

“She’s not a shrink, and you’re not a psycho. You don’t have to be one to ask for help, dude. Do you think I’m a psycho ‘cause I talked to her?”

“That’s not what I meant…”

“That’s exactly what you meant,” Leon insists.

“Look.” Arthur sighs. “It’s different. I… didn’t have a messy break up. And I never… I always sorted myself out on my own. It’s… it’s no big deal. I’ll take care of myself just fine.”

“You tried it last night, and look how that turned out.”

Arthur contemplates punching Leon in the face but refrains from doing it just yet.

“D’you still have to write that essay for Mr. Bayard?” Leon asks suddenly.

“Yeah, why?”

“Let’s go to the library and do it. What’s it about, Napoleon?”

“Yeah… I guess. Library? Is that how you picture a perfect day of skipping classes? Seriously?”

“That’s how I picture you not flunking out of school during your senior year, dumbo.”

“I don’t need no shitty school. I’m not going to stay in Camelot longer than I have to, I told you.”

“And what will you do? Tell me. You’re underage. The police will look for you. They’ll find you and drag you back if you don’t get into a serious trouble by that time. There are worse jerks out there than even Kay.”

Arthur doesn’t say anything because his plans have changed slightly, and he doesn’t want to run anymore, he pretty much wants just to end it. But he can’t tell Leon that. No freaking way.

Leon looks at him intently for a few seconds and then pulls his phone out of his pocket and turns it on.

“Who do you want to call?”

“The only fucking person in the world who can talk some sense into you.”

“And who would that be?” Arthur sneaks a peek over Leon’s shoulder to see who the latter’s going to call.

The contact Leon chooses says “Mr. Emrys.”

“How the hell do you even have his number?” Arthur can’t help but let some of the overwhelming panic he feels slip into his voice. “Don’t call him! Are you out of your stupid mind?”

He tries to snatch the phone out of Leon’s hand, but Leon ducks easily as if he expected that and presses the phone to his ear.

“He gave his number to Gwen and Vivian once when they complained to him they couldn’t make heads nor tales from their assignments and he agreed to give them a couple of tutoring sessions after classes on Dreiser and Salinger, back in September. I figured, it wouldn’t hurt to have it, ever since you started the whole seduction plan thing… oh, Mr. Emrys, hello. Arthur? Yeah, he’s fine, more or less. Well, I’m calling you ‘cause he needs to talk to you.”

“No, I don’t!” Arthur hisses, stepping back from Leon. The pain and humiliation and desperation that he managed to keep mostly at bay during the last hour all come crashing back. He can’t deal with it now. He just can’t.

“Yes, you do,” Leon hisses back. “So, you have a minute, Mr. Emrys? Yeah, I’m giving him the phone now.”

Leon takes Arthur’s limp hand, wraps his fingers around the phone and lifts his hand to his ear for him.

Fucking traitorous bastard, Arthur thinks. He hates Leon now with a passion of a thousand burning suns, but he’s scared so much more than angry. Oh, so much more.

“Arthur?” he hears.

Mr. Emrys’ voice is soothing and cutting him at the same time. He breathes faster, shorter, blinking every half a second.

“Arthur, don’t keep silent. Answer me.”

“Hey,” Arthur says, because he can’t not do what Mr. Emrys asks. That’s not how the world works.

“Arthur,” Mr. Emrys exhales. “Are you alright? The school is upside down because you two disappeared…”

“I’m fine,” he interrupts. “Totally fine. Can’t be better.”

“If you want to lie to me,” Mr. Emrys says mildly, “you’ve got to learn to do it better. Although, I’d prefer it if you told me the truth.”

“Don’t act like you care,” Arthur spits.

Mr. Emrys sighs into the phone, and this sound comes to Arthur as a wave of static noises.

“The fact that I don’t love you sexually doesn’t mean that I don’t care, Arthur,” he says gently. Arthur finds himself trembling, but it’s not from cold because, somehow, it’s become really hot during the last couple of minutes. “I want you to be safe. I want you to be happy. I wish you all the best in life.”

“Do you give this crap to every student you meet?”

“Pushing people away won’t help you, Arthur.”

“Stop doing that,” Arthur says meekly.

“Doing what?”

“Giving your freaking advice, and saying that you care, and everything. You know I… I love you. I love you and I can’t have you. Do you know what it does to me? When you say you care it’s like my guts are turning inside out.”

He stops right there because there’s only so much humiliating shit he can say in one go, and he’s just reached the limit.

“I’m sorry, Arthur,” Mr. Emrys says, sounding like he’s really, really sorry that the Earth goes around the Sun and not the other way round. “But I want to help you through it if I can. I… I’ll think of something. And I want you to promise me right now that you won’t do anything rash. I’m going to talk to Headmaster Pendragon right away, and I want you to stay with Leon for now and… please, don’t do anything he wouldn’t like you doing. Can you promise me that?”

Arthur squeezes his eyes shut.

“Yes,” he whispers. His voice doesn’t want to cooperate with him saying this but he can’t not say it. If that’s what Mr. Emrys wants, Arthur will do it. “Yes, I promise.”

“Good,” Mr. Emrys sounds immensely relieved.

Arthur ends the call without a goodbye and gives the phone back to Leon who manages to look smug and guilty at the same time.

“Take me home,” he asks, suddenly exhausted beyond imagination. “Yours, I mean. If you don’t mind.”

“Come on,” says Leon readily and tugs him by the sleeve in the necessary direction.

* * *

“Gwaine says there’s lots of shouting in your father’s office,” Leon shares, looking up from his phone.

“Father loves shouting.” Arthur shrugs. “I think if he didn’t do it at least once a week he’d burst. What is Gwaine even doing there eavesdropping?”

“I asked him that, yeah. He says he’s there because it’s not only your father, but also Mr. Emrys doing the shouting. Everyone likes Mr. Emrys, and everyone wants to know what’s going on, so Gwaine is doing the honorary job of eavesdropping while the others keep Catrina occupied someplace else.”

“What?” Arthur sits up from where he was curled up on the couch. “He was going to talk to Father… Jesus, I should’ve said it was a bad idea. What are they saying? What’s going on? Ask him!”

“I already did,” Leon reassures. “Wait a minute until he answers.”

Arthur waits dutifully with his fingers twitching anxiously. Leon’s phone chimes with a new message, and Arthur snatches it from Leon’s hand before the latter can even react in any way.

“Arthur!”

Arthur shrugs Leon’s indignation off, opening the message. It says: 

_h-r says its mr em’s wily gay ways that got arthur all gay. they shout all the time whoa theyr swearing whats pflag mr em talks about?_

“What’s PFLAG?” Arthur repeats dumbly.

“It’s an abbreviation. It stands for Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, it’s an organization, actually. Give me my phone back!” Leon grabs it, and Arthur lets him.

“How do you know?” he asks, confused.

“Jesus, Arthur, if you though I wouldn’t know it, why on Earth did you ask?” Leon has his patented patient look on, the one that says ‘you’re a stupid dork and I don’t know how I put up with you, but I must be a masochist because I want to put up with you.’ Leon’s looks are chatty like that, they can express whole freaking pages, and Arthur has them all memorized. “When you told me you were into Mr. Emrys, like, really into him, I thought it wouldn’t harm to do some Googling on the subject.”

A new message comes, and Leon is quick to deflect Arthur’s intents on snatching it again.

“What does it say?” Arthur asks, he almost begs. He has to know because he has a feeling that shit is about to hit the fan, and it’s not gonna be pretty.

“Stop it, you’re going to hyperventilate or something, seriously,” Leon admonishes and rolls his eyes when Arthur gives him his best ‘I don’t fucking care’ look. “It says… oh, Jesus. It says ‘headmaster just fired mr em cuz hes gay & bad influence on arthur wtf ’”

“What?”

Leon gives Arthur the phone. The message says exactly that.

Arthur hops off the couch, his apathy and self-pity evaporating like drops of water on a hot stove.

He knows what he wants to do. He’ll probably have to break the promise given to Mr. Emrys because Leon is not going to like the idea, but sometimes keeping promises is less important than… other things.

* * * 

“This is a bad idea,” Leon says, trailing after Arthur. “Like, royally bad, you know.”

“You said that already,” Arthur snaps. “Try something new this time. God, I can’t believe it, this asshole…”

“My mum would tell you not to say such things about your own dad,” Leon mutters, “but personally, I agree.”

Arthur storms through the hallways of Camelot High, earning lots of intrigued glances – they are probably thinking “here’s Pendragon the fag, heh”, but for once in his life Arthur doesn’t give a shit about what people think. He’s fuming, he’s in rage, his anger is burning so bright inside him that it hurts, and he’s practically feeling blisters forming there, where the anger flares up to his throat, leaving the aftertaste of bile on the back of his tongue.

He doesn’t pay attention to Catrina the Troll who’s trying to say something and kicks the door to his father’s office open. 

“What the fuck do you think you just did!” he yells, and yelling doesn’t help – it only makes the anger brighter, stronger, more painful. 

Father looks up, holding the telephone by his ear, and says smoothly:

“Can I call you back later?.. Thank you, goodbye.” Then he hangs up.

“What is the meaning of this?” he asks. This is his dangerous voice, the one that promises Arthur living hell.

Little he knows, Arthur thinks. Even if he really tries, he won’t be able to make it any worse.

“You fired Mr. Emrys! Because I’m in love with him, God, I can’t believe it. He didn’t seduce me! He didn’t encourage me! Wanna fire someone? Disown me, for fuck’s sake, don’t touch him, leave him out of it!” he’s shouting at the top of his voice, and he doesn’t doubt that Gwaine or someone equally sneaky is out there listening. Gossip will be all over the school in fifteen minutes, and it’s good.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Father stands up.

A long time ago it was intimidating. Right now it makes Arthur clench his fists to hold back and not throw something heavy and solid into his father’s face. God knows, the jerk deserves it.

“I don’t? Well, fucking enlighten me!” Arthur’s pretty sure he spits while speaking, but he doesn’t really care. And if some of it falls on some important document, fine. More than fine.

“I can’t have a… a _predatory gay_ in my school, ruining my own son’s life!” Father hisses. “It’s for you own good that he should be removed from this school…”

“Whoa, what?” Arthur has just reached a new level of disbelief. Trust Father to enlighten him about such things every single day. “Predatory? Are you out of your mind? I was chasing him, I was downright stalking him, I assaulted him! He did nothing, nothing at all! God, what a disgusting bigot you are. You think, _removing_ him will do what, straighten me up, huh? I’ll love him until I fucking die, and there’s nothing, nothing you can do about it!”

This is the moment when Father slaps him.

He has never touched Arthur before. Insults, intimidation, yelling, ignoring – all of those, yes, checks throughout the whole list, but it has never been physical. Until now.

Arthur’s cheek is burning as if his anger has seeped out through the pores onto his face. He lifts his hand and touches the sensitive abused skin.

“Snap out of it!” Father yells, and Arthur’s not the only one here losing it, that’s for sure. “I will not have a fag as a son! And with his corrupting influence removed you’ll come to your senses in no time…”

“The hell I will,” Arthur says. He’s not yelling anymore, he’s calm as much as it’s possible with his blood boiling under his skin. “You won’t have a fag as a son, then? Well, you’ll have no son in this case.”

“Are you going to walk out of here with your head held high?” Father suddenly sneers, and it’s somehow worse than everything else, worse than even the slapping. “And where exactly are you going to go? You’re underage, you’ve got no money, no education, no place to live. You’ll be back home tomorrow morning latest, with your tail between your legs.”

Arthur laughs at that, honest to God laughs. It feels so good to finally find something funny about all of this, and he relishes in the feeling for a few brief moments.

“You think so?” he asks, not expecting an answer. Father doesn’t do sarcasm, but it’s not Arthur’s problem, right? Not anymore. “Well, try me. Here’s the deal: either you restore Mr. Emrys as a teacher in this goddamn school, or you won’t have a son the moment I walk out of here.”

He hears Leon and Catrina simultaneously gasping at the door.

Father is silent for almost a minute, considering the deal. Arthur breathes heavily, his anger and desperation mixing inside him and making his stomach churn and his head dizzy.

“Go,” Father says at last. He sounds resigned and revolted at the same time.

Arthur flinches at that. When he offered the deal, he counted on a different outcome. 

But he’s not going to go back on his word, oh no.

“If that’s what you want,” he says. He goes for ‘icily’, but manages only ‘whispering.’

He turns away from Father and walks out past Leon and Catrina standing there mute and gaping like fish. There’s open horror on Leon’s face and delighted anticipation on Catrina’s. She always hated Arthur’s guts; good for her, she’ll finally have her chance to comfort this son of a bitch _in private_. It’s a good thing he won’t have to stick around to see that happening, actually.

It’s only in the corridor that Arthur notices his hands shaking.

Leon slings his arm around Arthur’s shoulders and leads him away without saying anything. 

The world is kind of reeling around Arthur, but breathing feels strangely easier now; maybe because he’s all numb and calm now. 

He thinks of Mr. Emrys’ goofy smile and delicate fingers, and the numbness shrinks in size, but doesn’t go away. 

He doesn’t try to prod it further.

* * *

Arthur slams the door open and runs upstairs three steps at once, with silent Leon on his heels. 

He’s going to do it right this time. Not a rash, stupid, careless thing. He’ll take whatever legal documents he has, grab the three hundred pounds – the leftovers from his summer car washing job and last Christmas – from the sock drawer, some clothes, his laptop, his mother’s photo he keeps on his nightstand. He’ll take it all with him and leave to never return.

He wonders briefly if this fits into the promise he gave to Mr. Emrys – it’s probably not what the latter had in mind, but, sticking to the word of the promise, Leon doesn’t mind. Actually, Leon hasn’t said anything since they left school.

He’s probably in shock or something; what with his parents being the nicest people on Earth, he must not have expected Arthur being disowned on the spot for being gay (even if Arthur’s not really sure he’s truly one hundred per cent gay, and it’s, frankly, the least of his concerns right now). That’s what always got Leon hurt, like that time he dated Morgana – he believes in the good in people.

Arthur thinks he could tell his best friend everything about people being naturally douchebags and mean tossers, but now is probably not the time to soften the blow of Leon’s future imminent disappointment in humanity. Maybe later.

Arthur throws his belongings into the bag he usually takes to football practices, to carry the gear and a change of clothes. He thinks he’s probably never going to play football again, not in the foreseeable future, and this actually has him dropping his medical insurance card onto the floor and stopping to take a deep breath.

He likes – liked football. Not that he was keen on getting a sports scholarship for college over it or even becoming a pro, and he chose it back then because the football team was the first one to hold tryouts that fall and he wanted to do some sport in his spare time, not because he couldn’t live without it. He certainly can live without it now, especially considering that Key’s attitude is probably an example of what he’d get anywhere.

But it still stings. More than Leon’s mournful silence, more than Father’s disgusted rejection.

Maybe because of all the things that happened to him recently and got under his skin this one is the easiest to bear.

He purposefully doesn’t imagine what’d happen if he let everything else from under control. He’d most likely explode, or… or something.

He chooses to let the thought hang and finishes his packing hurriedly, desperate to get out of here as soon as he can.

“Let’s go,” he says, once his mother’s photo is in the bag, wrapped carefully in two t-shirts.

Leon nods mutely. His eyes are huge, and his lips are parted slightly as if he wants to say something but isn’t quite sure what it is.

Before leaving, Arthur puts his keys on the small table in the hall, littered with junk mail and some glossy magazines Morgana forgot half a year ago. He’s not going to need to open these doors anymore.

* * *

When Arthur wakes up, he doesn’t understand at once where he is and why. He is still half-asleep, and despite the fact that he had slept for God knows how long, he feels like exhaustion is flowing in his blood, heavy and unpleasant under his skin. 

The sensation of smooth cloth under his cheek is familiar, somehow more so than the beige wallpapers through the sleepy haze in his eyes. Leon’s sofa in the living room. Arthur remembers countless times before when he dosed off right here, after long video game matches, or marathons of _The Simpsons_ , or something else that feels like it was a millennium ago. He wonders why it feels like that, and it’s then that the memories hit him.

Phone talk with Mr. Emrys. Quarrel with Father. Grabbing money and papers and leaving.

Right.

He sits up, drowsy, slow. He should probably stand up and do something, but he has no idea what exactly. His mind is blank – tabula rasa, his mind suggests readily, fishing the words out of somewhere deep. 

His arms are cold, and he wraps around himself the blanket that someone – Leon, or Leon’s mum, no doubt – has thrown over him at some point. Father’s words flash in his mind’s eye, fresh like he hears them in reality all over again: no money, no education, nowhere to go, underage. He draws his knees up to his face and thinks that Father was right in every single detail; having lost the only stable thing, his home, his – however shitty – safe heaven from the big bad world, he doesn’t know how to be at all.

Somehow, the fact that Father was right makes Arthur’s anger and bitterness flare up once more, breaking the drowsy calmness. He suddenly feels hot from the blood that rushes to his face, and his stomach grumbles, and the taste in his mouth is disgusting, so he should go to the bathroom and then ask for something to eat. And try to figure out what to do after that.

Hatred is alive inside him, boiling and churning; it’s eating him inside, he can feel it, but it makes him alive, too, so he decides that he likes it after all.

He doesn’t have anything else left, so he’d better cherish what he has, he thinks.

He slips from the sofa and stumbles over something which turns out to be his own bag full of everything he took with him when leaving. He kicks it to the side and goes to the bathroom as planned.

Planning is good. Maybe, not really good, since it was what got him to where he is now; on the other hand, maybe, staying where he was would be much worse. He doesn’t know, he can’t know.

His face in the mirror looks impossibly tired, and he doesn’t look at it again as he splashes cold water on it and sticks his head under the tap. 

* * *

Leon’s family are all gathered in the kitchen, talking quietly. All talk dies immediately when Arthur enters the kitchen, and he suspects they were talking about him. Well, fair enough.

“Hello,” he says, offering them a small smile. “Mrs. Brown, Mr. Brown.”

He nods to them both, as polite as he can be. 

“Good evening, Arthur, sweetheart,” Mrs. Brown chirps. There’s a worried wrinkle between her eyebrows, no matter how lively her voice is. “Sit down, I’ve saved you some dinner, here.”

Arthur doesn’t have time to blink before he is sat down and given a full plate of steaming stew and a fork.

They all watch him eating, and it’s rather unnerving; the stew is stuck in his throat under their concerned looks, and he thinks that they probably consider him much more miserable than he actually is. Like, poor boy, through such a pile of shit, and there’s no end to said pile in the foreseeable future.

Thinking about shit, even metaphorically, robs him of the last appetite he had, and he puts the fork down.

“Thank you,” he offers. “It was delicious, Mrs. Brown.”

“It’s nothing, dear,” she smiles at him again.

Leon doesn’t have in him to hold back for much longer, it seems, because he leans forward towards Arthur and asks:

“What are you going to do now, mate?”

“Dunno,” Arthur is honest. “Do you know if I can, like, emancipate, or something? There must be a legal way for me not to ever see… him again.”

He can’t bring himself to saying ‘Father’. Even if, technically, he still has one.

“We will look into it,” Mr. Brown says. He is usually silent, his wife and his son able to carry out any conversation without much help from outside, so when he speaks it feels like it’s a special occasion. Most of the time, it is.

Mrs. Brown nods eagerly, obviously ready to hop off her chair and call a lawyer or at least Google something out this instant.

“And then?” Leon asks. God, he can be annoying when he wants. Arthur thinks. “I mean, you’re welcome to stay here as long as you want,” he adds hastily. “I mean, you need to have something in mind. What to do with yourself. In general. You know.”

Arthur shrugs. Leon winces, most probably from a covert kick he gets from his mother under the table, and says, even hastier:

“It’s just… dude, while you were out on the sofa, I thought about not seeing you at school every day and such, and it’s awful, you know. And unfair. You should go to some school, I mean, to another school. And to college after that.”

He stops, his cheek flushed from all the worry on Arthur’s behalf, and Arthur thinks: thank God. He doesn’t really know what to do in case Leon says some sappy shit like ‘I want you to be happy, mate, and not to screw your life over your fucktard of a father’. Reasonable people don’t say such things out loud, even if they mean them. 

“I don’t think as far as college,” he says, sounding quite feeble after Leon’s heartfelt speech. “I think, like a week from now. You know. And…”

He turns to look at Leon’s parents.

“I don’t want to be a burden,” he says. “I can find a job.”

Mrs. Brown opens her mouth, fiery motherly-instinct-based protest on the tip of her tongue, but Arthur shakes his head.

“Please,” he asks.

She sighs, but nods and doesn’t say anything else.

* * *

It might be a violation of some law or something – borrowing another person’s phone without them noticing and looking through their contacts while in the bathroom under the pretence of taking a shower, but Arthur’s broken enough laws by now to be worried about that. He just finds the number he needs in Leon’s phone, ignoring twenty-eight messages Leon had got and not read yet, and dials it with his own mobile.

There are exactly four rings before the phone is picked up, and there’s a hurried “Hello!” Arthur closes his eyes and feels this tiny word wash over him like a hot bath, the tension seeping out of his shoulders and his teeth unclenching. His head starts throbbing irritatingly, however; maybe, because he’s still rather hungry.

“Hello,” he says before the pause is long enough to suspect in him a creep who just calls and breathes on the line. “How are you, Mr. Emrys?”

There’s a gasp at the other end, and he hears a noise like something heavy was dropped on the floor. He smiles, imagining Mr. Emrys so shocked by this call that he has relaxed his grip over some thick dusty volume that no one has ever read except literature teachers.

“Arthur, my God, it’s you! I’m fine, how are you? Where are you? I heard about your argument with your father…” Mr. Emrys stops abruptly like he hasn’t got enough air to go on and continues a few seconds later. “God, Arthur, I’m so sorry, I couldn’t imagine my interference would have such an effect, I’m so sorry, are you alright? Where are you? I thought you’d be at Leon’s but he wouldn’t pick up the phone, so I didn’t know what to think.”

Arthur bites his lower lip to stifle nervous laugh which would be utterly out of place.

“I’m at Leon’s,” he reassures. It’s strangely easy to talk with Mr. Emrys now that they are not a student and a teacher, just two random people feeling both very sorry. “And… you don’t need to apologize. It’s me who cost you your job. I don’t know if you’ll find another you’ll really like, he won’t give a recommendation you deserve… God, I’m rambling, aren’t I? Anyway, I called to say I’m sorry.”

He stops himself right there. Whether Mr. Emrys knows or not that the sound of his voice literally helps Arthur breathe, he doesn’t need to hear it said. He expressed his wish not to hear any such nonsense many times. Perhaps, it’s time for Arthur to take his head out of his arse and stop troubling the one person he doesn’t want to ever trouble.

Mr. Emrys laughs. Arthur presses his forehead to the cold tiles of the wall and relishes this sound; his very skin soaks it up greedily, and it feels somehow mushy and tingly at the same time, and Arthur allows himself to melt down to the floor and let the wall hold his body weight for a while.

“Don’t worry about my job,” Mr. Emrys says. “Whatever happens, they’ll still embrace me at the remand home where I worked before, and I liked it there just fine, so I’m not under any threat of becoming homeless and starving. You, on the other hand…”

He trails off, clearly unsure of what to say, and Arthur thinks that Mr. Emrys is probably not used to such quick loss of the ground under his feet, no matter how much they miss him at the remand home.

“I’ll be okay,” Arthur says. “I’ll think of something. Stay at Leon’s for a while, find a job, emancipate. Maybe, I’ll go to a Pride Parade. Leon’s mum will insist I go when there’s the next one, I just know.”

This gets one more short laugh out of Mr. Emrys, and he feels sort of proud about it. 

“I can always enlist in the Army or something,” he says since Mr. Emrys is silent and someone has to keep talking. “Or volunteer to teach children in Africa how to read. I may not be the brightest pea in the pod, but I can teach how to read, and I can even tell them what the capital of Australia is and stuff.”

“These are very noble plans, Arthur,” Mr. Emrys says, just a faint trace of humor in his voice. “Don’t hurry with anything life-changing, alright? I mean, I think emancipation may be the best idea under the circumstances, but not, say, the Army.”

“Yeah,” Arthur says. “I just said it. I haven’t really thought about the Army. I haven’t really thought much by now, I’ve slept for half of the day.”

They keep talking for ten minutes more, Arthur mumbling some semi-coherent gibberish now and again to indicate that he’s still here and Mr. Emrys saying reasonable things in concerned voice.

Arthur clutches the phone to his chest after he has to say goodbye and feels like crying, but his eyes are dry. When he does go to the shower, though, the water running down his face imitates whole freaking rivers of tears, and Arthur just lets it run until Leon bangs on the door asking if everything’s alright.

It isn’t, but Arthur may – possibly, probably – get used to it.

* * *

Google says that emancipation is not as lovely as it seems. Arthur scrolls down the results, and every single link advises him to find a good lawyer to deal with the overwhelming amount of paperwork the court will require. Also, they all tell him to think twice since it strips him of the privileged social status of a minor, and even under the best circumstances it’s no walk in the park. He also learns he has to have a job which is paid well enough for him to provide for himself without any help, and in any case he’ll have to deal with Father again. Getting his consent to Arthur’s emancipation? Say that again, please, maybe then it’ll become more real than a true alive dinosaur in front of the Eiffel Tower.

Arthur sighs and snaps the laptop shut after remembering that the police chief, Aredian, has lots of old ties in the district court – which is in Mercia, by the way, Camelot is so stupidly small it doesn’t have a proper court. And Father has known Aredian and ordered him right and left long before Arthur was even born.

It looks hopeless. He can’t emancipate, and he can’t go on the way he is – Father can grow tired of waiting for him to come to his senses and just call the police to drag him home; and there’s nothing that Leon’s parents would be able to do – they’d probably face the threat of a kidnapping charge or something, should they try to defend Arthur.

Father holds Camelot with an iron fist, by the throat, only letting it breathe just enough so as not to die. And he still has Arthur in his grip, no matter what Arthur wants.

Arthur curls into himself, unable to hold his back straight. It’s like the weight of something is pressing him down, and he doesn’t even know what it is. 

What should he do? Wait until Father tightens the grip? Run away again and try to live somewhere far away, under another name? What would he do when he can only play footie fairly well and miss Mr. Emrys every second with never-fading intensity? These two things are really the only ones he knows how to do, sheltered and spoiled as he is. They wouldn’t get him a roof over his head or any food to put in his mouth. And how on Earth is he supposed to get documents for another name? He’s not bloody James Bond, he’s just Arthur from a town which is a very, very tiny dot on the map.

His hands itch with the need to take his phone out and call Mr. Emrys, just to hear his voice again and make sure he’s alright, but Arthur doesn’t dare. He knows he mustn’t do any such thing; and he knows that talking with Mr. Emrys won’t solve any of his vital problems.

Knowledge doesn’t stop him from wanting, though. He goes to sleep on the sofa with his hands in tight fists to stop himself from taking the phone and dialing.

* * *

In the morning Arthur is still tired; so much so that it takes a real effort to drag himself to the bathroom and to the kitchen. He has never had to literally make himself put one foot in front the other before, not even when he once had a nasty flu with his temperature through the roof and the CDs on his shelf talking to him in high voices in his fever-induced delirium. Frankly, he wants just to turn into a puddle of mud and stay like that on the floor, gooey and lifeless, until Mrs. Brown washes him off and he ceases to exist altogether.

He hasn’t slept all that much, thinking about his possible emancipation throughout the night. He thought of another variant: what if the court – provided Arthur actually gets there with all the scary paperwork in his sweaty hands – forces him to stay with Father, seeing as he’s not fit to live alone with no job and no anything? And Father may not be inclined to take Arthur back – and Arthur wouldn’t come back anyway. So that’s square one again.

The whole thing looks like an endless loop, a Möbius strip – wherever he starts, he ends up where he was in the beginning. The coffee that Mrs. Brown made him tastes like nothing, like distilled water.

Leon has already finished his pancakes with syrup, while Arthur’s are still untouched. His stomach turns inside out from only the smell of food, thank you very much.

Leon’s backpack is beside the table, books and everything evidently inside. Right, it’s a school day today. Arthur tries to think of something to do during the day and come out with nothing. Maybe Mrs. Brown will ask him to do the laundry or something, at least to occupy him. He’d wash their car or mow their lawn, but it’s late autumn, and it’s freezing outside. What’s the use of mowing a wilted lawn anyway?

“Erm,” says Leon. “I’m off to school now, I guess.”

He looks at Arthur, and Arthur just nods, because he doesn’t understand what Leon wants from him.

“Do you want me to… say hi to Morgana, or tell Gwaine that you’re alright, or something?” Leon asks. 

“What? No, why? I mean, if they ask, tell them whatever you like. Not that they actually want to know. I think.” Arthur shrugs. Morgana is probably glowing with glee now that he’s out of school and out of his very life and the only reason she’d like to know any details would be to gloat more thoroughly, and Gwaine, despite being a decent bloke all in all, never liked Arthur much. In fact, Leon is Arthur’s closest friend, and the only one other person approaching this definition was Key. Was, yeah.

“Sure, okay.” Leon stands up awkwardly and fetches his backpack off the floor, almost crashing his empty mug with it. “I’ll be off, then. Bye. See you in the afternoon, right?”

“Right, sure,” Arthur agrees.

Leon leaves the kitchen with a kiss to his mother’s cheek like he always does, and Arthur is alone with food and Mrs. Brown. Two lovely things, but not really helping just now.

“You know what,” she says cheerfully, “Beth is coming over today! You remember Beth, don’t you? My sister’s little girl. You and Leon used to play with her sometimes.”

He remembers a sandy-haired girl who likes to laugh and make him and Leon take playing with her dolls with utter seriousness. 

“It’s nice that she’s coming, Mrs. Brown,” he says.

Mrs. Brown leaves whatever it is that she’s doing and sits down where Leon was a minute ago. 

“Could you do me a favour, Arthur?” she asks. “You see, my sister and her husband leave for the day, and she wanted Beth to stay with me until night, but this morning I found out I have some urgent business to attend, and just now I was figuring out what to do. Could you, maybe, look after Beth today? You always seemed to get on well with her. And my sister will pay you for babysitting, of course.”

“Of course, I’ll look after her,” he says. It’s the least he can do for this amazing family upon whose life he intrudes so rudely. “When is she coming?”

“In a couple of hours.” Mrs. Brown smiles, relieved, and Arthur bites his tongue not to ask if she really has to go somewhere or if she just makes up something for him not to go crazy from sitting around all day doing nothing. “Thank you so much, Arthur, you’re a saviour, truly.”

“You’re always welcome,” he says. “Shall I wash the dishes?”

* * *

After washing the dishes he climbs back on the sofa with a book - _The Godfather_ which he started reading quite a long time ago, at Coach’s, but never finished; it’s a different edition, but the text should be the same, shouldn’t it. The washing took up the little strength he could master, and the thick book on his lap is unbearably heavy, and turning the pages proves to be a strenuous activity. He thinks how all his life he took vigour and energy for granted, and how he never actually valued them before now. Where on Earth did they even go? 

He can’t remember half of the characters in the book, but it’s alright – he’s too tired to pay much attention, and most of the time he just follows the lines and paragraphs with his eyes without understanding what’s going on.

He doesn’t notice dozing off until he’s woken up by a sudden lapful of a happily shrieking Beth.

“Arthur! Arthur! How are you?” she tugs at his hair which falls into his eyes, and he smiles almost against his will. “I got an A in math yesterday! And today Mrs. Emrys is ill, and there won’t be any classes except PE, and Mum said I can skip school altogether! Do you wanna play? I want to play! Do you have cards? Can you teach me to play video games? Leon says they are not for girls, but I think he says bullshit!”

“Hi, Beth. Don’t say that b-word, it’s not polite,” Arthur says automatically, while his sleep-addled brain catches up with everything she has just said with lightning speed. “Who did you say was ill? Mrs. who?”

“Mrs. Emrys!” Beth confirms cheerfully, and Arthur swallows a sudden uncomfortable lump in his throat. “She is our teacher. We had Ms. Alice before, then she re-tir-red, and we have Mrs. Emrys now. She’s very nice and always explains one more time when I ask, but right now she’s got a cold.”  
  
_Mrs._ Emrys. She can’t be his wife – Mr. Emrys is gay, after all. Most probably, his mother, or, maybe, a distant relative; say, a brother’s wife or something. Or, maybe, just a namesake; although it’s not like there are Emryses everywhere, it’s not a name like Smith or Jones.

“It’s good that she’s nice,” he says, gently removing the excited Beth from his lap – she’s quite heavy, and he can’t really bear the weight of a book. “Does she have her own children?”

“She said she has a son, yes.” Beth frowns, remembering. “She was talking to Headmistress Annis once, and she said she was very-very proud of her boy. I think she said he was a teacher too!”

Of course, teaching job would run in the Emrys family. Arthur imagines they are all a clumsy, kind-hearted, nerdy and sweet bunch who, for some inexplicable reason, love the ungrateful job of feeding children with knowledge. Mother’s an elementary school teacher; son’s a high school teacher. Arthur wonders if there’s some Emrys who teaches the middle school in Camelot.

“I want to play!” Beth demands, sparing no more thought to her ill teacher and her supposed offspring. “Arthur, let’s play video games!”

He knows Leon wouldn’t like his little cousin acquainted with games where one needs to kill and there’s loads of blood on the screen, so he chooses the one with car races – even if a car crashes occasionally, there are no gruesome graphic details. Beth is delighted anyway, and she demands snacks and juice, and she jumps all over the living room, and she beats Arthur in a race seven times in a row. He’s not very good with his hand-eye coordination today, and he’s not really in the mood for video games.

However, he basks in Beth’s unbound energy, feeling very old all of a sudden. It’s nice, spending time with someone who doesn’t know about his unfortunate love life – or lack thereof – and family problems. 

The time is close to lunch, and Beth grows bored with the effortless beating of Arthur time after time. 

“I want to eat,” she says, determined.

Arthur imagines cooking in his current state and decides that he doesn’t want to set the house on fire or burn a hole in one of Mrs. Brown’s favourite pans (with his luck, he’d choose and ruin the favourite, no doubt). 

“Let’s go out,” he says. Maybe fresh air will do him some good.

* * *

They walk down the street, the chill and dampness blanketing them. Beth’s coat and hat are the only bright things in the street; the town is morose, ready for winter when the grey pavement would be covered with crispy white snow. Arthur wonders if he’ll see that, or, maybe, he’ll meet winter somewhere else this year. Who knows.

The air really helps him to clear his mind, chilling not only his cheeks and ears, but also his rushing, panicky thoughts. He pushes his hands further into the pockets of his jacket and offers:

“There are good sandwiches in that shop over there. D’you want a sandwich, a yoghurt and some juice?”

Beth seems keen on the suggestion, and Arthur leads her to the shop, counting his money in his mind.

This wasn’t the best decision he could have made – he understands it when he crosses the threshold of the shop, and the shop assistant recognizes him. She’s an elderly woman, robust and clearly still strong enough to stand behind the till all day. There’s disgust and pity fighting on her face and Arthur braces himself, nodding to her curtly. For some reason, the nod makes her snap out of it, and she turns away.

Suit yourself, Arthur thinks. Is there anyone in this town who isn’t aware of all details of his personal life? Apart from Beth, that is.

There’s another customer in the shop, huddled in the corner over piles of tomatoes and fennel. Arthur can only see him from behind, his coat and his blue beanie, but there’s a sudden overwhelming rush of recognition, running right through him. It feels like he’s been shoved into a hot oven; he is almost sure some sweat has appeared on his upper lip.

He briefly thinks if he should make himself scarce, but really, there’s only so much strength he can master today, and he’s at his very limit by now. So he comes over, leaving Beth ponder over the sandwiches in display out loud.

“Hello,” he says quietly.

The coat-covered back goes rigid for a moment, and then the man turns to look at Arthur.

It is amazing.

Arthur looks at him without blinking, taking him in all over again. Mr. Emrys’ face is just as gloriously angular as he remembers, all sharp lines and unexpected delicate smoothness; Arthur feels like Mr. Emrys, with his one-day stubble – he hasn’t shaven today, is it because he doesn’t have to go to work? – with his huge, crystal clear blue eyes, with his lips chapped and bright from the outside cold – like he’s the only thing distinct in the world, the rest of it blurs like the background of a photo. 

Maybe, he actually is.

Arthur looks at him and looks, noting in his memory the length of Mr. Emrys’ eyelashes, the way the scarf he’s wearing peeks out of the coat collar, the stray white lint on his shoulder; somehow, these meaningless details make sense like nothing else ever did. 

It makes Arthur happy, stupidly, dizzyingly happy, in such a way that he wants to dance around the small shop, and juggle tomatoes, and sing _Summertime_ , or do something else equally ridiculous.

He wants to hug and kiss Mr. Emrys so desperately, and only God knows how much effort it takes him to stay where he is standing.

“Erm… Arthur?” Mr. Emrys looks concerned.

Oh, right. Speaking. Making conversation. Arthur can do that.

“Hello,” he says.

“You already said that.” Mr. Emrys smiles, showing the dimples on his cheeks.

Arthur contemplates licking them. It's incredibly tempting.

“Yeah, I did,” he agrees. “How are you?”

“Fine, just fine.” Mr. Emrys looks flustered as if he doesn’t know how to be with Arthur now – not much sense in being teacher-ly patronizing, but not much sense in being as friendly as with an equal since Arthur’s still a child – more to the point, the one child who’d take friendliness as encouragement of his stupid, stupid feelings.

“I’m just shopping,” Mr. Emrys says, stating the obvious. The shop assistant throws them disapproving glances, but, thankfully, she’s distracted by Beth demanding to know all kinds of juices and yoghurts that this shop has. “Per… Coach Percival is meeting my mother at dinner tonight, he’s going to cook something, I don’t really know what but I think it’s going to be delicious. Anyway, he still has a job, and since I don’t, I volunteered to get the groceries.”

That is really something Arthur doesn’t want to know. He was unhappy enough without knowing that Coach slowly but surely becomes an inherent part of the Emrys family. 

“I see,” he says. “Is your mother the elementary school teacher here, in Camelot?”

Mr. Emrys nods, frowning. Crap. As if Arthur hasn’t shown himself as enough of a dangerous creep already.

“Beth told me about her teacher, Mrs. Emrys, who is ill.” He nods at Beth who tries to find the shop assistant’s opinion on whether the grapefruit juice is tastier than the grape juice, and why they aren’t one and the same when they sound so similar. “Beth is Leon’s cousin. I’m looking after her today, Leon’s mum asked me to help. I don’t mind, she’s a lovely girl.”

He stops to breathe in and adds:

“As soon as she said your mother’s surname, I thought she might be related to you. Is she better now, then?”

“Oh, I see,” Mr. Emrys says. “She’s all better, she took her meds and slept through the morning; in fact, she called me half an hour ago and said she’d be coming to dinner even if she was coughing her lungs out – which she isn’t, thank God. She’s just that curious about everything that’s going on in my life.”

They both smile at these words, but Arthur doesn’t really know what to say, and the slightly awkward pause makes their smiles wilt gradually.

“So,” Mr. Emrys says, overly cheerfully, “how are you? What are you doing here?”

Arthur explains about Beth and lunch and his total inability to cook – well, he can cook alright, he’s been feeding himself for years with simple things like boiled potatoes, fried eggs, sandwiches and toast, but he’s not likely to tell Mr. Emrys why exactly he isn’t up to working with the stove today.

Mr. Emrys nods in understanding.

There is a pause again, a long one, and Arthur agonizes over what to say or do. The help comes from Beth who has decided what she wants.

“I want orange juice, egg and sandwich salad and strawberry yoghurt!” she declares, clutching at Arthur’s hand. Then she notices Mr. Emrys and looks at him curiously. “Hello! Who are you?”

“It’s Mr…” Arthur starts. Mr. Emrys interrupts him:

“I’m Merlin.” He shakes hands with Beth, both of them looking equally serious and adorable. 

Something in Arthur melts and burns at his guts and heart, painfully, longingly. He has no idea what it is and just hopes it’s something physical like bad sushi. Except he hasn’t eaten any of those in months, so it must be the bloody feelings he continues to harbour despite all the trouble they’ve brought him.

“I’m your teacher’s son,” Mr. Emrys goes on, completely clueless about what he does to Arthur by merely existing. “Mrs. Emrys is my mum. She feels better now and says ‘hi’ to you.”

Beth shrieks in delight, and Mr. Emrys gives her one of those smiles with the dimples and the crinkled eyes and with sheer joy of life shining through. Arthur considers it best for now to retreat to the counter and buy what Beth wanted from the sourly-looking shop-assistant. He is lucky – she doesn’t say anything apart from naming the price he has to pay.

When he’s back with the food in his hands, Mr. Emrys remembers he wanted to buy some tomatoes and chooses half a kilo hastily while Beth is jumping around with her sandwich, still hot from the shop’s microwave, in her hands.

They are out pretty soon, and under some kind of unvoiced agreement they stroll to the nearest park – everything is quite near in Camelot, actually. Beth is eating while walking, happy to be covered in mayonnaise and ketchup from ear to ear. Arthur decides to let her have this innocent fun.

“I’m reading a book now,” he says. “I mean, not like it’s the first book in my life, you know… well, you do.”

God, Arthur thinks, exasperated. Can he say anything at all without putting his foot in his mouth? 

“Anyway,” he says. “It’s _The Godfather_. Have you read it?”

Mr. Emrys looks visibly relieved at the prospect of a conversation unrelated to their respective feelings and lack thereof; moreover, it’s a conversation about books, and Arthur knows he couldn’t find a better topic to makes Mr. Emrys’ eyes shine with excitement.

He loves making them shine. It’s a pity he can’t make it his job or something, he’d probably make a fortune out of it.

“I did, as a matter of fact.” Mr. Emrys tilts his head slightly to the side, smiling genuinely to the memory of the book. He probably read it at times that were happier for him than the present is for Arthur – the latter isn’t sure he’ll be able to remember these days with such an easy smile at any point in the future.

“It’s a classic of all mafia stories,” Mr. Emrys says. “I remember loving it when I was your age. The duty to the family, the secret dark life, even the unfamiliar Italian names – it was all so, so cool.”

“I didn’t think you liked it, you know,” Arthur confesses. “It’s just, you’re so excited about Shakespeare and Salinger, and other school programme guys, a mafia story doesn’t seem to fit.”

“No, I’m fascinated by all sorts of stories.” Mr. Emrys looks at Arthur seriously, his beanie askew. “If they are good, of course – well, sometimes even if they are clearly rubbish.”

“Why?” Arthur’s sincerely intrigued by now. “I told you why I like movies more than books, it’s your turn to tell me why you love books.”

“Sounds fair,” Mr. Emrys laughs, delighted and amused. “Well, it’s no secret or anything. And it’s quite simple, really. You see, when you read a book, it’s like listening to what the author wanted to tell you. It’s like talking to him, through the years, centuries even. I love words so much, I’m in awe of them – they are the only thing in the universe that actually gives us, feeble, lonely, and worrisome human beings, an opportunity to reach out to each other in the dark. It is beyond amazing that we can just tell each other what we think, what we want, what we had for breakfast this morning. It’s not a perfect way of communication as it is, since we have loads of misunderstandings; and the books, the fiction, is the one area in which we struggle consciously to make ourselves as clear as we can, to be understood. I’m not saying we don’t try in everyday life, but it’s still, you know, different, because books are the ultimate expression we can achieve until we know how to communicate telepathically or something. Reading a book is like reaching back to the author and holding his or her hand. Because they tell you the story that was born of their words, and it’s just, well, wonderful.”

Mr. Emrys suddenly looks shy instead of practically glowing with inspiration and closes his mouth abruptly, obviously eager to go on speaking but not wanting to burden Arthur with all this, quite strange to Arthur and so, so far from Arthur’s current problems.

Or, maybe, he just feels it’s too personal to share it with Arthur. 

Beth laughs loudly from a far, feeding the pigeons by a small pond with bits of her sandwich.

“What was the first book you’ve ever read?” Arthur asks. He’s being consumed from the inside with this urge, this craving to know everything that there is about Mr. Emrys – Merlin – and to hear it from Merlin himself, not find it in the Internet or through watching him secretly like a total disgusting, hopeless creep. 

Arthur finds it rather disturbing how often he’s been using the word ‘creep’ as of lately. He decides to think of it later.

Mr. Emrys bites his lower lip, trying to remember the correct answer to Arthur’s question.

Arthur waits. He can wait as much as Merlin needs, however long it is.

* * *

It feels surreal as he tries to think of it objectively. Mr. Emrys and him, talking in the park on a grey cold afternoon, discussing books, and movies, and childhood memories, and whatnot. Who could ever imagine that happening?

It feels like a dream; Arthur’s strung out, his neck and shoulders secretly in painful nervous knots, because he expects it to be a dream and to end at any point. Maybe in a couple of minutes Leon will wake him up, and there is actually no Mr. Emrys beside him, smiling and lively, carefree in the same unchained way Beth is; there’s only the looming vague prospect of emancipation, and Father’s wrath, and Mrs. Brown pitying looks, and the not knowing what to do with himself.

Arthur looks at Beth at this thought to check that she’s still alright playing on her own. She seems to be still finding the pigeons fascinating, even if they show no interest whatsoever after they are done with the sandwich bits she’s offered them. 

He’s a bit grateful to her for not being troublesome as children can be and letting him talk to Merlin. 

He turns sideways in order to sneak a look at Merlin’s sharp profile when it happens.

At first it’s a splash mixed with a scream. He doesn’t really register it, he’s never heard similar sounds before; but then he recognizes the voice, and it’s Beth, and the blood is literally chilled under his skin.

He jumps up, but he’s hopelessly slow and helpless, and Merlin is there before him, landing into the water of the pond with a loud crack of the ice and a splash. Some of the splashed water with ice particles hits Arthur, and it’s so cold that it burns on his skin. 

He slips and falls into the water too, just like Beth probably did, but the pond is closer to a puddle than to an actual pond, and it’s easy to regain his footing and to help Merlin take Beth out of there.

She’s cold to touch like a ball of snow, a human-formed ice sculpture, and she’s crying so loudly, so desperately; her clothes are soaked through, and Arthur takes his own jacket off with fingers stiff and numb from the cold. He puts the jacket over her shoulders, and Merlin’s coat becomes the next layer a split second later.

“We all better get somewhere warm,” Arthur says, squeezing Beth in his arms, covering the top of her head with his chin, trying to give her the little warmth he has. He feels numb all over, and even his own voice sounds a little bit like it’s detached from him and just floats around.

“Yeah,” Merlin’s voice breaks as his teeth start to clatter. “My house’s just two blocks away; let’s go.”

Arthur doesn’t actually feel his legs from the knees downwards, but he manages to walk anyway. His shirt is too thin, and there’s nothing protecting his neck or face, and they are stung with the wind. The walk to Merlin’s house feels the longest one he’s ever had, including his failed attempt at running away and the camping trip he took part in when he was eight or nine.

Inside the house it’s so warm that it doesn’t register at first, like Arthur’s frozen solid and it should take some time before the warmth actually touches him. Beth isn’t crying loudly anymore, she’s just sobbing quietly, huddled at his chest, a heavy lump. 

“Let’s get you both to the shower,” Merlin says. “There are two bathrooms, the main one and the one near the guestroom, they are both totally ancient but working. Here, let me…”

He takes Beth carefully from Arthur and goes somewhere up the narrow stairs. Arthur’s left standing in the hallway, breathing in the warm air – it feels somehow alien, and he’s still so, so cold.

When Merlin is back, Arthur can’t say how long it’s been – minutes, or hours. 

“Take it off,” Merlin says and tugs his wet sleeve. “Come on. Come, upstairs.”

Arthur follows Merlin as he’s told, fighting the buttons of his shirt on the way. His fingers are numb, and the buttons are small, and he’s almost losing the battle. By the time they get to the second bathroom, however, the buttons are all undone, and the soggy cloth clings to Arthur on its own.

“Go on.” Merlin pushes him into the bathroom gently. “Take your time, warm yourself properly.”

It’s all familiar – taking clothes off, switching the shower on, standing under the steady stream of water. He can do it without thinking, and he does. The hot water slides over him, unable at first to get through the cold that’s settled under his skin, but after some time the warmth starts seeping through, so blissful and wonderful that it almost pains him. 

He doesn’t look for soap, or gel, or shampoo. He just lets the water wrap him from head to toe; the walls of the shower cabin are being slowly covered with steam, and he lets his still numb fingers draw something on them. He suspects it’s Merlin’s name he’s trying to write, but new layers of steam destroy whatever it is before he can make sense of it. 

It’s still hard to breathe, but it gets easier and easier as the heat settles inside him as well as outside. He gets out when his knees start to wobble, and there’s a big chance of him just falling, slipping and breaking his stupid neck right then and there.

While he was in the shower, Merlin – must have been him, who else – left a pile of clothes on the closed toilet lid. He puts them on. The sweatpants are too long, but almost tight in the waist; they must be Merlin’s. The fleece shirt is big enough he can wrap it around himself twice, and he doesn’t really want to think whose it is. And the knitted thick socks look hand-made. Arthur wonders if Merlin’s mother made them for him, for some Christmas or just because she wanted him to have warm clothes. Pulling the socks on, he imagines Merlin in these socks and in mismatches soft pants and a sweater, sitting in an armchair with his long legs tucked awkwardly underneath him and reading something obscure but endlessly fascinating for him. His imagination puts a half-drunk cup of tea beside Merlin’s elbow – he’d push it to the floor when he turns without thinking, no doubt – and a pack of some sweets to munch on in Merlin’s lap.

The picture is suddenly so vivid that Arthur’s heart aches physically and thuds in his chest heavily like it has to make conscious efforts to keep moving.

The floorboards in the corridor are creaky, and Arthur doesn’t know where to go, but he manages to find the living-room since its door is wide open, and Merlin can be seen inside, cooing over sleepy Beth and covering her with three blankets at once. Arthur notices that Merlin has changed as well, but, apparently, hasn’t showered.

Arthur stops at the doorway and just watches. He still feels cold, but significantly less so after the shower; and he’s tired again. It feels like he’s about to keel over any moment, and his thoughts are all hazy as if he’s half-asleep, but he doesn’t want to sleep, not really.

“Oh, there you are.” Merlin smiles at him, and Arthur’s heart thuds painfully again, once, twice. Stupid thing, Arthur thinks, but he can relate to its desperation.

“Let’s get you into the guestroom,” Merlin suggests. “It’s best if you get some sleep.”

Arthur nods mutely and lets Merlin lead him back through the creaky corridor into a room which smells like dust. There’s a cup of hot tea waiting for him on the bedside table, and there are blankets and even a duvet. Just how many blankets a person needs, Arthur thinks and forgets the offhand flash of curiosity almost at once.

The tea burns his tongue and the back of his throat, hot like liquid fire, and the blankets are dead weight on him – one more, and he’d probably just suffocate. It is warm, however, and he lets the warmth lull him into a trans-like state – not quite sleeping, not quite awake.

Merlin leaves quietly, closing the door after himself tightly.

* * *

Arthur still hasn’t really slept when Merlin comes back for him.

“Arthur? Arthur, get up. There’s dinner. Come on.”

Arthur gets himself out of under all the blankets with some difficulty, still feeling much like a zombie but better than before anyway. 

Dinner, he remembers. The dinner which was supposed to be the first meeting of Mr. Emrys’ mother and Mr. Emrys’ boyfriend.

Some time ago Arthur would whoop with joy at such a brilliant opportunity to wedge himself in between everybody and ruin everything he could, but now he feels ashamed. If only he was watching Beth like he should have been, this evening in the Emrys house would be so much quieter and happier. 

He wonders if Mr. Emrys’ mother knows that Arthur loves her son. Coach Percival certainly does, of that there can be no doubt, and Arthur imagines it might add some tension to the atmosphere. 

Still, there’s nothing he can do right now – he can’t very well grab Beth and run away with her to Leon’s house. He doesn’t even know where his own clothes are and whether they are already dry or not, to start with.

Coach Percival greets Arthur with a nod and a ‘Hello.’ Arthur mutters ‘Good evening, Coach’, but his attention is actually aimed at an elderly woman with dark hair, kind eyes and a brilliant smile – Merlin’s smile. She’s talking to Beth who looks like the happiest child on Earth despite what she went through just several hours ago.

“Hello, Mrs. Emrys,” Arthur says meekly.

She turns to look at him and smiles just as brilliantly again; for some reason, Arthur remembers for a fleeting moment his own mother, smiling lightly, almost invisibly from the only picture he has.

“Hello, Arthur, dear. How are you feeling? Merlin here has told me and Percy all about your afternoon, what an awful thing to happen, isn’t it? Sit down, the dinner’s already waiting.”

“I’m fine, thank you, Mrs. Emrys.” He shrugs, slipping into a chair which is the furthest from Mr. Emrys’. “Beth, are you alright?”

“Never better!” Beth sing-songs, bright-eyed, with her cheeks flushed. 

Mrs. Emrys ruffles her hair and adds:

“No Mrs, Arthur, just call me Hunith, alright?”

He nods again and keeps his eyes down, feeling horribly out of place, an intruder, nobody hogging hot water, clothes, blankets, attention. 

Mr. Emrys sneezes loudly, and Coach immediately hurries to get him a mug of hot milk with honey, and Mr. Emrys protests in slightly nasal voice that it’s gross and he doesn’t want to drink it, but neither Coach, nor Mrs. Emrys really take his opinion into consideration.

Arthur wishes the ground would swallow him right about now as the heat of shame floods his face – it’s his fault Mr. Emrys is ill now. He’s to blame for a freaking huge lot of things, to think of it.

The ground does not provide him with such a mercy, though.

He probably deserves it all and more.

* * *

The dinner is pure torture. Arthur keeps his eyes down, and by the end of it he knows by heart the pattern on his plate, on the tablecloth and every peculiarity that there is to his share of – probably delicious – steak and mixed salad. He doesn’t eat it, though; he doesn’t feel like chewing, what with his throat constricted with guilt. He drinks a lot of juice and tea, though, and his stomach is unpleasantly full of liquid.

All the others talk animatedly, and it’s clear that Mrs. Emrys – Hunith, Arthur corrects himself – likes Coach a great deal. Well, there’s no reason why she shouldn’t. He’s all around a nice man, and only a blind person wouldn’t see how much adoration is there in Coach’s eyes when he looks at Merlin, how gently he touches Merlin’s shoulder, how brilliantly Merlin smiles in return.

At some point, Merlin trusts Coach to take a thoroughly used paper tissue from him and bring him another. It would be rather gross, if it weren’t utterly endearing.

When Coach starts collecting the plates, Merlin (and maybe Arthur should stop calling him by given name in his head) rises to his feet, sneezes and says:

“Arthur, Beth, I’ll drive you home. Your clothes should be dry by now, I think.”

Home. Oh shit, Arthur thinks. The blood rushes to his face as he recalls forgetting to call Mrs. Brown to tell her where he and Beth are. His mobile is probably wrecked after having been in a pond, and she couldn’t reach but she must have tried. Oh God.

“Leon’s mum,” he says, his unbearable guilt crushing the words in his mouth so that they come out sort of squished. “She doesn’t know where we are…”

“Of course, she does, darling,” Hunith says cheerfully and squeezes his hand briefly. “I called her as soon as I knew what was going on. She expects you both back after dinner, and I think she’s not angry at you. Arthur?”

He can’t breathe. Panic and relief both mix in his head, his lungs, and there’s just no place for air. He can’t inhale or exhale; his head is reeling, he needs air, but he can’t, he can’t, he’s drowning like he was afraid Beth was during those minutes at the pond. There’s no water around, but he still feels like it bubbles and gurgles in his lungs, heavy like lead, cold, unforgiving, making his lungs seize in vain attempts to get some oxygen.

“Arthur. Arthur!” It’s Merlin calling him, and Arthur listens, because how can he not? “Breathe, Arthur. Breathe with me. Slowly.”

It’s Merlin holding Arthur’s hands now, not Hunith. Arthur feels the flutter of Merlin’s pulse under his own weak fingers.

“Listen to my breathing and just repeat, alright? In. Out. Slowly.”

Merlin breathes as slowly and calmly as if there’s not a single worry in the world, and Arthur tries to follow. He fails at first; his eyes start tearing up, and there’s pain in his chest which is at the same time dull and sharp, and he suspects he might be going to die.

This thought leaves him strangely subdued, but he tries to copy Merlin’s breathing nonetheless, and when he finally can breathe again, his inhales and exhales matching Merlin’s like a perfect echo, he doesn’t even notice it at first. Only when pain fades, leaving some throbbing emptiness behind, he realizes that he’s breathing again.

“Jesus, Arthur,” Merlin says, and his voice trembles a little bit. “You scared us half to death.”

How would Mrs. Brown be scared, if Hunith didn’t call her? Arthur doesn’t say it out loud, he just frees his hands from Merlin’s and bites his lower lip, trying to think of something more suitable to say. What do you say to people who have just saved you from a severe panic attack?

“Your clothes is upstairs,” Hunith says kindly. “You probably want to change before heading back.”

Arthur shoots her a deeply grateful look and flees the room in order to change.

* * *

The ride back to Leon’s house is quick. It’s already dark outside, and Beth is yawning – which doesn’t stop her from talking non-stop. Arthur is really grateful to her for filling the silence. Mr. Emrys only sneezes appreciatively every once in a while which seems to be encouragement enough.

However, when they’re about two blocks away, Beth falls asleep. Mr. Emrys glances back briefly to make sure she’s not listening and says without looking at Arthur:

“Today I called a friend of mine. Do you remember Mr. Gaius who I replaced?”

Arthur nods mutely, unable to guess where Mr. Emrys leads this conversation.

“Well, he knows another person who is an excellent lawyer. His name’s Mr. Kilgarrah. I’ve seen him a few time, he looks ancient like a turtle, honestly, but he’s the cleverest, the most quick-thinking and efficient person I have ever met, and I’ve met a lot of people. He specializes in protecting people whose rights have been violated. Ga… Mr. Gaius, I mean, he said Mr. Kilgarrah had agreed to take your case. He asked, and Mr. Kilgarrah agreed.”

“My case?” Arthur says meekly. 

He has no idea what this particular word means in this particular context. He hasn’t done anything criminally offensive – well, if one is willing to dismiss destroying the projector, almost assaulting Mr. Emrys in the latter’s own garden and watching movies online for free. If these are the reasons for the existence of the ‘case’, why is that Mr. with a mouthful of a name needed? Whose rights is he going to protect – Mr. Emrys’?

“Yes, your case.” Mr. Emrys pulls up in front of Leon’s house, but neither he, nor Arthur makes a move to get out of the car. Beth is sleeping, curled up in her seat.

“What your father did and is doing to you is wrong on very many levels,” Mr. Emrys says, sounding tired as if the world is resting on his bony shoulders alone. “You have a right for his support and understanding, and at the very least he must provide you with suitable care until you are of age, and no blind prejudice he nurtures in his mind can be an excuse for his current actions. You must know, Arthur, that there’s nothing wrong with being what you are and standing up for what you think is right. I, for one, do not have one iota of regret about having been fired. Working under a tyrant and a bigot is not my life’s aspiration anyway, to be honest.”

He sighs. Arthur listens.

“Your father can rule the life of Camelot, but these are the limits to his power. Mr. Kilgarrah knows a lot of journalists that would like to crush your father’s reputation into dust unless he agrees to the terms of your emancipation. And he can make sure that the court is held not here, but someplace not influenced by anyone from this town.”

“This sounds like a plan totally thought through,” Arthur says, just to say something.

“I had enough time to think and make calls this afternoon, while you and Beth were sleeping your unexpected cold baths off.” Mr. Emrys chuckles mirthlessly and half-sneezes, half-coughs, pressing his forehead to the steering wheel.

“Also it sounds a bit like blackmail,” Arthur notes. He isn’t sure how he feels about that.

If that’s possible, Mr. Emrys’ willingness to be involved into a crime punishable by law just to help Arthur out makes Arthur love Mr. Emrys a little bit more.

He’s feeling like he’s choking on his enormous, feverishly warm love that doesn’t fit anything anywhere and destroys lives and gives his days some kind of a meaning which is yet cryptic but is somehow vital nonetheless.

He swallows it down until it stops choking him so much.

“I don’t really care.” Mr. Emrys shrugs. “As far as I’m concerned, neither do Mr. Gaius and Mr. Kilgarrah.”

Arthur nods, unable to think of anything to say.

“Also, there’s one more thing.” Mr. Emrys sighs again. “I don’t think we should see each other anymore. It’s… not healthy for you.”

“Do you think I have a flu or something?” Arthur retorts sarcastically and immediately, a moment before his brain catches up with both what Mr. Emrys has just said and what he himself has replied with. 

“What?” he says, his mind blank. “You mean… not see you? Never?”

He can’t quite process it. He tries to imagine many years ahead without Mr. Emrys, without Merlin; a Merlin-less life, a world devoid of Merlin.

His imagination refuses to work. It’s like attempting to imagine antimatter or vacuum. He has problems with those concepts either; they are so far outside of everything he has ever experienced, it’s sort of pointless.

“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.”

Mr. Emrys sighs once again, takes his hands off the wheel and rubs his face. In the scarce light of the streetlights and the lit windows of Leon’s house, he looks equally morbidly exhausted and indecently young. His skin is smooth, tight over the prominent cheekbones, and his hair is all ruffled; there are deep shadows under his eyes as if he hadn’t slept for days worrying over something. 

His hands look cold. Arthur doesn’t know why they look so, but he desperately wants to take them into his and warm them with his own breathing.

He doesn’t imagine never seeing Merlin again – and it’s Merlin sitting beside him right now, impossibly eternally young, not having aged a second since that old photo; some kind of a mythical creature, a catcher in the rye, saving kids from various kinds of fire, literal and metaphorical. 

There only one distinct difference: Merlin on the photo was holding the baby in his arms and grinning from ear to ear; the Merlin of today is unhappy so deeply as if the unhappiness has settled down in his very bones, and he maintains at least twenty centimetres of distance between Arthur and himself at all times.

“I’m sorry,” Arthur says quietly. “I won’t bother you again.”

“Mr. Gaius will come to see you and arrange your first meeting with Mr. Kilgarrah tomorrow,” Mr. Emrys says. “Mrs. Brown knows to expect him.”

Arthur nods and thinks if he should say goodbye, or let himself touch Mr. Emrys’ hand or shoulder, or maybe at least bid him goodnight and getting well soon.

He doesn’t come up with a single idea and decides eventually that he probably isn’t allowed to do anything at all since Mr. Emrys doesn’t want to see him ever again.

Ever again sounds like an awful amount of time, and Arthur promises himself to think of it later, when he’s alone. For now he just nods one more time awkwardly, gets out of the car and takes the sleeping Beth off the seat carefully. She doesn’t wake up, just settles her head under his chin and murmurs something very soft in her sleep.

Arthur carries Beth to the porch and climbs the steps, watching where he goes.

He looks back only when he’s already pushed the door, and it’s opened a few millimetres; he allows himself that one look, hoping it would go unnoticed.

However, Mr. Emrys is still sitting in his car, watching Arthur get into the house, and for a split second their eyes meet.

It’s Mr. Emrys’ turn to nod awkwardly after a few moments of intense looking. He starts the car and drives off, much faster than he should when it’s dark and he’s got a severe cold.

Arthur closes the door of the house after himself, and it finally hits him, like a wave: he will never see Merlin again.

Never again.

There’s something fragile inside him that breaks at this thought, and it hurts him with its sharp broken ends all the time, like it’s alive and it hates Arthur.

All the time, and he thinks it probably means ‘forever’ because that is how long he won’t see Merlin.

It all looks very logical in his head, and the sheer mathematical simplicity of it lets him sleep through the night.

* * *

Arthur wakes up early, as if he still has to go to school. He doesn’t get up, though; he just lies on his sofa listening to the Browns walking past, Mrs. Brown calling her son from upstairs to get his lazy arse down and have breakfast before he’s late, Leon’s sleepy grumbling. He hears the soles of shoes making the hasty tapping dance of the morning, the rustling of jackets being shrugged on, the abrupt clanking of keys.

It’s all so soothing and _normal_ that Arthur only actually remembers yesterday when the Brown men leave and the house grows quiet. 

He will never see Merlin again.

Right.

He isn’t sure how to live with this. He isn’t sure he can even think of this. 

He can probably stay in bed all day. It’s hardly like Mrs. Brown is going to trust him with doing something again after what happened to Beth yesterday. He can just lie here and think.

Before he can properly contemplate if he should get up and brush his teeth to get rid of his nasty morning breath, Mrs. Brown shows up in the sitting room. She’s smiling but her eyes are surrounded with worried crinkles. 

“Good morning, Arthur, dear,” she says warmly. “Slept well?”

He doesn’t have time to answer before she continues.

“There’s Mr. Gaius to see you. He’s waiting downstairs. I’ll tell him you’ll be there in ten minutes.”

She gives him a reassuring smile and leaves.

Apparently, he has to get up and make himself presentable after all.

* * *

Mr. Gaius looks just as Arthur remembers: old like the cliffs on the Mercian coast, with bushy eyebrows that are by far the most expressive eyebrows which Arthur has ever seen, with that grandfatherly stern but gentle air that has always made it difficult for Arthur not to slip and call him ‘Uncle Gaius’ in the classroom. 

“Hello, my boy,” he says.

Arthur sits down at the kitchen table, across Mr. Gaius, and looks at his hands on the table surface. Next to his right ring finger is a faint trace of sticky apple juice, Leon’s favourite (unless Leon steals Arthur’s in which case there are no favourites for some unfathomable reason). 

“Good morning, sir. I… you’ve come to help me?”

He finds himself unable to say ‘Mr. Emrys asked you to help me, right?’ so he just speaks around the name, leaving it hang in the air unsaid but clear nonetheless. 

“Indeed I have,” Mr. Gauis agrees. “Mer… I have been fully informed about your current situation.”

Mr. Gaius has been really informed, then, since he knows to tiptoe around the name. It doesn’t save Arthur from having to swallow down the thick bile taste on his tongue.

“What your father did – and does – to you is abominable,” Mr. Gaius says softly. His eyebrows are frowned in concern for Arthur and anger at Father. It’s a little bit amusing, even what with Arthur’s numb attitude. “I’m more than happy to assist you in your emancipation. Mr. Kilgarrah asked me to find out what legal documents you have with you. Your birth certificate? Any sort of ID? Anything at all?”

Arthur lists the meagre papers he has. He doesn’t even know if he has any more, come to think of it. Should there be any more? How many documents is a person supposed to have? He never thought about such things, engrossed in football and studies and hanging out with mates and being the obnoxious little brat he’d been before.

Does this mean he’s not that person now? Has he changed? When did he do it, how did he do it? He is pretty sure he knows how, but he’s not really sure about when or why or what he’d done to deserve it.

Maybe he hadn’t done anything at all, and it just happened. Things happen to people all the time. Maybe he had.

It hurts his head to think of it.

Mr. Gaius nods, his lips a thin line.

“I arranged for us to meet Mr. Kilgarrah this afternoon in Caerleon,” he says. “We’ll be staying in a hotel overnight, so you probably have to pack now and have some breakfast.”

Caerleon, the capital city, is quite far away from the sleepy, Stephen King-creepy (as it seems to Arthur now, after everything), tiny Camelot. Arthur has been there twice, both times on school trips to some museums, and all he really remembers is the overwhelming rush and buzz and hugeness that hit him during their brief walks through the streets that led to museums with exhibits in sterile shining glass cases. 

Caerleon sounds good.

“How much is the train ticket?” Arthur asks. He still has some money, he could probably pay his way there…

“Nonsense, my boy, don’t worry about money.” Mr. Gaius waves his hand dismissively and his eyebrows are drawn together in a clear ‘drop this fidgeting thing right now and think of more important stuff’ message.

Arthur nods mutely, both grateful and pissed off. How is he supposed to emancipate if he can’t take care of himself? If he isn’t allowed to take care of himself; if he lets others not to allow him.

But it’s almost definite that he doesn’t have enough money for a ticket to Caerleon so he doesn’t say anything.

* * *

Caerleon is as much of a whirlwind as Arthur remembers and more. It’s terrifying and brilliant, and Arthur feels just so _aware_ of the noisy busy life rolling around steady and messy at the same time like ocean waves. The ride to the hotel is a blur, the ride to Mr. Kilgarrah’s office is a blur; and Mr. Kilgarrah himself, ancient and with a slightly deranged air, is a blur of endless energy too.

Arthur wonders what it’s like to be a part of it. To follow the patterns of the crowds, to melt into the queues and flash-mobs, to have a purpose to his movements every moment of the day.

Perhaps he’s idolizing this big city life just a bit. But still, fitting in here would be nice. If he doesn’t have to go back to Camelot once everything is said and done, then there’s a small chance. 

Maybe if he’s busy all the time his heart will ache somewhat less.

The documents that Arthur brought seem not to be quite enough but Mr. Kilgarrah says it’s enough to start with. And then he just stares at Arthur in his deranged way and asks Arthur to tell him everything about his father because he needs Arthur’s own words to think their strategy through.

Arthur isn’t sure what to say at first, but he honestly tries. He recounts the days spent without ever seeing Father, those several months in primary school when Arthur used to come to an empty home and tell his little school news to Father’s photo which stands on the mantelpiece in the living room. He dutifully tells Mr. Kilgarrah what Father said when Arthur’s sexual preference appeared to be not as conventional as Father would like, but there’s a gaping hole in his tale because he doesn’t say anything about Mr. Emrys. There’s no need for it, after all. This is about Arthur and his father, isn’t it?

He tells about nights spent at Leon’s and his futile attempt to run away. He remembers the bitter feeling of knowing nothing about his mother and tells about that too.

It’s weird how many painful, gut-wrenching things are there to tell about his perfect shiny life of a rich and handsome popular jock. 

He tells them all, and Mr. Kilgarrah takes notes and listens intently. 

At some point Mr. Gaius squeezes Arthur’s shoulder, suddenly strong and protective, but lets go almost at once.

* * *

Late at night, at the hotel, Arthur can’t sleep. He stands at the window, looking outside at the still busy streets lighted with neon signs and streetlights and thinks back to everything he said today at Mr. Kilgarrah’s office. The hotel room is small, a bed, a table, and closet and a nightstand with a small TV-set all fitted in neatly without much space left to walk on, and it fills fully with his voice and he whispers again and again the things he said, rolling them on his tongue as if saying them once wasn’t enough and he wants to tell them to the whole world.

They burn like a hot kettle burns clumsy fingers. Arthur touches the window panels, leaving smudges from his hands. The glass feels cool and firm against his skin, and he can’t help but think if Merlin’s hands feel similar.

He’ll never know that.

He presses his forehead to the glass too and cries, feeling something inside him breaking once again and wonders briefly how there can still be something left to break. He bites his lips, keeping the sobs inside because the walls are so thin and Mr. Gaius is sleeping next door. His shoulders tremble incessantly, and his lungs seize like he’s drowning.

It feels like mourning. Arthur cries over what he has become, what his life has become, over the fact that he’s pathetic and weak enough to cry over all of this.

The bright artificial light of Caerleon doesn’t let the moonlight inside the room. Arthur can’t even tell if there’s moon in the sky tonight because of all the tall buildings. He wishes he could place his fingers into a pool of transparent pale light on the windowsill, but there are only red and yellow and blue spots cast by neon signs of shops and cafés.

He doesn’t sleep this night, watching the lights of the city invade the room and letting the quiet murmur of a turned on TV lull him into a sort of calmness. 

When the day comes, Arthur brushes his teeth in the little bathroom shared by all the rooms on the floor and puts his head under the tap turning on the cold water.

He doesn’t feel ready, but he must at least look it. Mr. Kilgarrah will be waiting for him in the office this morning to go over the expected court procedure.

Arthur’s eyes are red but dry. He feels a sudden urge to smash his fist into the mirror but he makes himself just turn away and head out of the bathroom.

Ready or not, he’ll do his best to deal with it.

* * *

It is very sudden when Arthur finds himself in a courtroom. It’s not really sudden, of course; there has been a lot of document preparation, and talking, and negotiating (whatever that was for, Arthur had no idea), and other stuff that melts in Arthur’s head like cheese melts on a pizza and transforms all the separate edible pieces into a whole soft substance called filling. The substance which is the result of all the talking and signing and preparing is called court. 

Now that he’s here he finds – rather with curiosity than with any other emotion – that he doesn’t quite remember how he got here. He supposes he must have got up in the morning, brushed his teeth, had breakfast, ridden a car or a bus – something moving anyway. It could’ve been a cart with a horse for all Arthur can recall. Although, carts are really not Caerleon style so most probably it was a bus.

It’s cold in this room, and Arthur’s arms are covered in goose bumps under the sleeves of his jumper.

He recalls quite vaguely signing the petition to remove minority which was full of legalese, and Mr. Kilgarrah swearing in Latin under his breath after he got off the phone conversation with Father’s lawyer – apparently, Father objects to the idea of Arthur’s emancipation very strongly.

There’s burning fear in Arthur’s guts, making him nauseous and knee-weak. Right now he’s sort of hanging mid-air, not quite here, not quite there, but if the court decides it’s best for him to go back to his father, what would he be able to do? Run away again? That didn’t go over so well last time. 

It doesn’t feel good to give the most important decision of his life into someone else’s hands, even if they – the hands – are supposed to be qualified enough to define what is exactly in his best interest. Also, it doesn’t feel like he has a choice.

There’s not much he understands about the legal procedure; in fact, most of the knowledge that got stuck in his head is what he found by Google on his own. It’s quite enough since he has a lawyer – whom he won’t be able to pay on his own, and he hasn’t even thought yet about it today – to understand it fully. 

He knows, though, he has to have a job and a roof over his head, and he has both. Halfway through the preparations, Mr. Gaius – ‘just call me Gaius, my boy, stop this mister nonsense’ – asked his old friend, Mr. Anhora, who was the head of the local library if there was a vacancy. There was, even if the vacancy included not doing anything involving brains. It is rather a ‘hauling-boxes-with-books’ and ‘fetching-things-and-putting-them-where-he-is-told’ sort of job, but Arthur doesn’t mind. He likes the smell of dust and paper, and the feeling of pages and covers, both smooth and rough, under his fingertips, and the mindlessness of work leaves more than enough time to think of Merlin.

No one said Arthur shouldn’t think about Merlin. True to Merlin’s wishes, Arthur doesn’t question the necessity of never contacting him again – even if sometimes, at night, the mobile number he should never call would float inside his head, bright and kind of unsteady like a mirage in the shaky heated air of a desert – but he thinks about Merlin. Anyway, it’d be really hard _not_ to, since Arthur is surrounded with books, books, books, and nothing but books for hours on end. In the narrow aisles there’s not much space for Arthur’s football-broadened shoulders, and he’d probably feel uncomfortable in there all day, but it reminds him of Merlin, and it helps Arthur breathe freely. 

Sometimes he notices a book which Merlin had mentioned, as a part of school programme or just because he thought it good; when this happens, Arthur takes the book home to read. See, that’s the perk of working in a library: you can read yourself to death if you so wish. Well, to be honest it’s never been Arthur’s true desire in life, but one has to adjust to the circumstances.

His home is nothing much. It’s an attic room in a block of flats, the cheapest that there is and, perhaps, the smallest. The ceiling is slant, and Arthur suspects that in spring, when the snow on the roof melts, the room may be flooded. But there’s a lot of light, there’s enough space to sit and to sleep and even to stand and make a few steps, and the window in the ceiling is huge and lets loads of light inside.

Arthur rents it from an indifferent obese man who only cares that Arthur doesn’t cause trouble and gives him money on time; how old Arthur is, or what Arthur does here alone, or even what Arthur’s surname is, all of it is of no importance to him. Arthur likes this.

The block is in the outskirts of Caerleon – one of the many reasons why it’s so cheap – and Arthur’s window overlooks an abandoned park. Arthur remembers looking out at the park and thinking that later on, if there won’t be much snow, he can start running before breakfast (he can hardly afford a gym now, can he, and his body is restless without proper exercise) and nobody will disturb him in that park. He remembers thinking it distinctly but he has no idea when exactly it was.

Right now, in the court room, the last couple of weeks of his life – the last several months – come to a closure. He feels as if he’s waking up. The cold helps.

He sighs as quietly as he can – so that Mr. Kilgarrah on his right, Mr. Gaius on his left and the Browns behind him won’t hear in the general noise. There’s a book in his backpack, a ruffled paperback of _Catcher in the Rye_. He wishes he could keep it in his lap, touching it all the time, because when he reads it or touches it, it’s almost like hearing Merlin’s amused voice reading out that stupid line about Holden Caulfield snatching children from the rye.

The room is almost empty. Save for Arthur and his back-up team, there’s a judge – an elderly woman with tired eyes, two bored security guards at the door, and Father with his own lawyer. Arthur tries not to look in their direction but he feels Father’s eyes on him, heavy and unrelenting. It’s creepy and unsettling but all in all Arthur doesn’t care much – he’s got lots of other stuff to worry about.

The court is called to order unexpectedly soon, startling Arthur out of his reverie. 

He wishes Merlin was here too.

* * *

Mr. Kilgarrah is a good lawyer as far as Arthur can say. He speaks passionately but not too emotionally, his arguments are well-balanced. He gives a solid impression of someone who knows better, a rock in the sea of indecision which is Arthur’s life. His gestures are precise, calculated just enough not to be mechanical; his every breath is in what he does.

It’s a bit like Merlin talking about literature; except that Merlin is open and flail-y and loving, nothing like the measured perfection of Mr. Kilgarrah, but the feeling of being _fully immersed_ is just the same.

Arthur wonders if he’ll ever stop thinking about Merlin when he’s awake and dreaming of him when he’s asleep. Admittedly, with the moonlight bathing him all night long through the ridiculous window of his dusty attic and with _Catcher in the Rye_ under his pillow, it’s going to be somewhat hard.

The judge watches Mr. Kilgarrah with the sceptical expression of someone who has seen it all and then some. She looks kind and caring nonetheless, and from time to time she glances at Arthur. He doesn’t know what she sees. Are all the emancipating kids like him, with their hair mussed despite their best efforts, with their eyes sunken from the lack of sleep, wearing baggy jeans and faded jumpers? Should he have gotten a suit to look like an ideal small adult capable of taking care of himself? 

Father's lawyer stands up to speak. Arthur listens to him distantly, letting the flow of words wash over him, and only few random things stick in his memory: ‘unstable’, ‘immature’, ‘misunderstanding’, ‘fragile’. Apparently, Father decided to keep Arthur after all, if only to teach him to be a proper son. 

Arthur isn’t sure if he’s scared or just exhausted to the point of brain fever. Maybe both.

“Mr. Pendragon Jr.” the judge says, and Arthur makes himself pay attention. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

He fights the urge to ask if it’s his last word before he’s dragged into jail for the rest of his life. That would be definitely immature.

He is mildly surprised that she’s asking him, anyway. Should he speak? If yes, what’s the point of having a lawyer to speak in his place? Does she suspect there’s something else going on, something no one is telling her anything about?

He shrugs and rises from his seat, collecting his thoughts.

“Your Honour,” he says. Mr. Kilgarrah hasn’t given him any pointers for such an occasion, and Arthur honestly has no idea what the judge would like to hear. “I’d like to say for myself that I need to emancipate.”

He settles for the truth.

“And why is that?”

Why indeed?

“Because of many reasons,” he says. He would be more specific but he doesn’t want to risk letting any hint about Merlin out. The judge has such kind eyes, it’d be too easy to look in them and let himself slip up. “You’ve heard them all from my lawyer.”

“You think you’re absolutely fit to live on your own, then?”

Arthur feels irritation in the way his teeth grind and slight but sharp pain sparkles in his temples. How on Earth can anyone ever get emancipated when a freaking fifty-year-old judge comes to the courtroom already certain that minors’ problems are no more than teenage over-exaggerated drama?

“I have a job, Your Honour,” he says politely. “I also have a flat. I can pay my bills, I can cook, I can clean, I know how to do laundry and stuff.”

“And what do you think of the fact that your father is deeply concerned with your level of immaturity and instability?”

“My father is not concerned with anything apart from his own reputation, Your Honour.” It’s really making him better, this whole telling the truth thing. Maybe he can do it more often on appropriate occasions. “His ability to love and accept ran out after my mother had died, and I would really rather not bet my life on the off chance that this ability can revive after sixteen years.”

He feels a betrayed, outraged look Father is giving him. It would hurt Arthur some months ago, but now he’s a bit busy with all the other hurting stuff so he doesn’t really pay attention.

“And what do you think of education? You haven’t finished school yet.”

“I work in a library, Your Honour.” Arthur, quite unexpectedly, feels the corners of his mouth twitch in a small smile. “I plan on getting tutoring from time to time and educate myself in my free time. If everything goes alright, I shall take my A-levels at the same time as my peers.”

Mr. Gaius was the one who came up with this scheme and also offered tutoring in English and helping in the search for other tutors who wouldn’t leave Arthur penniless; Arthur, in his turn, agreed with the idea but wouldn’t think of it himself because, well, education just wasn’t on his mind.

There wasn’t much of anything there these days, since Merlin drove off away him and into the Never.

Then again, that’s a _minor_ detail that the judge doesn’t have to know.

She looks at him intently and he looks back, waiting quietly – the irritation melted away almost at the same moment it flared up, really, so now he feels positively tranquil. 

* * *

Afterwards, when the judge proclaims him successfully emancipated, he slips into the restroom and locks himself in the stall to dry-heave the overwhelming, knee-weakening sadness and fear. He doesn’t want to even think what it is that he’s afraid of, what all the reasons which make him sad are.

Later in the evening he buys some takeaway pizza for dinner and calls Merlin from a phone booth (he didn’t know they still existed but when you dedicate a fair amount of time to Googling something you usually manage to Google something out). He listens to the two impatient ‘Hello’s greedily, slumping his shoulders in relief and feeling how the blood circulates around them, unpleasant and worrying in the aftermath of constant tension. 

Then Merlin falls silent – for quite a while, and Arthur starts suspecting Merlin has hung up even though there weren’t any sounds of that – and then he asks in a small, not at all teacher-like voice:

“Arthur? Arthur, is that you?”

Arthur chokes on the air he’s been inhaling and drops the receiver as if it’s burned him.

He drops the pizza, too, and forgets it there in the booth in a hasty retreat. 

He’s not really hungry anyway, so he doesn’t come back for it.

* * *

Everything is strangely anticlimactic after that. Arthur runs in the morning, his muscles burning pleasantly and his breath hanging in the air in small white clouds; he works, and reads, and visits his tutors. He does his laundry and counts his money until the next pay check. He even manages to save some although he has no idea what he might need it for. His job is not of the kind that lets one roll in cash so it’s unlikely he can save enough for something big, like a better flat or a car. It’s not like he even wants something like that.

He doesn’t dare call Merlin again even though the number is still there in his mind as if cut in stone. He thinks if he calls again, he’ll probably face a restraining order – which, Arthur reckons, may be already long overdue.

The limits he puts on himself don’t stop him from loving Merlin, though. It’s like this love is a part or him, a limb or an internal organ. It’s huge inside him, unimaginable, crucifying and giving him some highest possible bliss at the same time. He’s not sure about what he’d do if it ever went away; if it can ever go away, this stupid, unreasonable, larger than life love.

He Googles Merlin a couple of times again but nothing new comes up, and Arthur even comes up with the idea of registering on Facebook under a false name and befriending Merlin there, but the thought of it makes him sick. 

Lies are not what he wants and so not what Merlin deserves. He doesn’t really know what it is that he wants but it’s not deceiving Merlin and using him to quench Arthur’s own thirst for him, this borderline-stalkerish, creepy, unrelenting, gut-deep need.

Maybe it’s a good thing that he only has access to the Internet at work where he’s properly occupied most of the time.

The winter goes without Arthur noticing much of it (and, oddly so, without a restraining order), and it’s only when he takes off his trainers one Tuesday morning after a run that he sees the mud stains on the soles and the front, and it hits him: spring is coming.

In a way, it’s like a recluse in the woods may feel after the snow melts and he’s no longer cut off from the outside world – he has lived through another winter.

It’s a quiet but amazing feeling. Arthur relishes in it for a few minutes before taking a shower and going to work; there's not much of anything he can honestly call amazing in his life, really. 

Sometimes he thinks he’s an ungrateful brat because he has Leon calling him every other day or so and Mr. Gaius. He has a job thanks to Mr. Anhora and relative freedom thanks to Mr. Kilgharrah. He should probably be making the most out of what he has because he has a lot more than many kids his age (the ones in Africa are starving when Arthur can afford to leave a perfectly edible pizza lying on the floor of a phone booth) – but he isn’t, and it should probably disturb him more than it does.

Sometimes, though, he doesn’t think at all. He has an old rattling radio which was about to be thrown away when he saved it from the imminent demise. In the evenings, when his homework is done, and he has food and clean ironed clothes, he lies down and listens to the Shipping Forecast or something else equally cryptic and unrelated to his life, sounding almost like a magic spell in an unknown language with all the incessant static noises.

* * *

He is definitely not going to take the academic world by a storm any time soon but he has passed his A-levels pretty decently. He receives the email with the results on a sunny afternoon, while cataloguing some new books which Mr. Anhora didn't have time for; nobody is around.

Arthur looks at his marks and wonders what on Earth he is to do now. A college always seemed like a logical milestone but now there's no one to pay for it. Without a college education, what job can he find? Stay here at the library, where every book he handles tugs at something tight and bittersweet in him, reminding him of Merlin? Sell burgers at McDonalds? Wash floors somewhere? There are all things he could do but not the things he wants.

Merlin wouldn't like Arthur getting stuck in dead end jobs he didn't want.

It is probably Arthur's fault that he still has no idea what he wants to do except love Merlin forever and ever and keep himself from calling again. These two activities, Arthur's rather good at them. Quite proficient, if he says so himself. But there's no career in them, is there?

There's a new _Catcher in the Rye_ edition, shiny and with a glum-looking guy on the cover who resembles Arthur - not uncannily but a bit, yeah. Arthur almost wants to keep it, if not because he likes the story, then because he's a freaking masochist.

Heck, he could go all out and raise his masochism to the heights previously insurmountable. 

Why not?

* * *

Morgana texts him one evening saying that she got in the Caerleon State and will be living on the campus and wouldn't mind having coffee with her idiot little cousin to see what he's doing with himself.

The coffee conversation isn't quite as stilted as Arthur expected but it's very evident how both of them avoid talking about Father.

They don't have coffee together very often because Arthur likes to brood at home after work and Morgana prefers hitting nightclubs and bars but sometimes they do. It's nice.

* * *

The evening classes for aspiring future teachers who are at the same time trying to hold a job that lets them pay for said classes aren't difficult. Arthur knows some things about human body and sport practice already - wasn't footie his best subject, eh? Coach Percival would be so proud to know Arthur follows in his footsteps. Maybe.

The time for learning is scarce and the curriculum is cut down to bare essentials leaving only one elective to choose from the three that are offered. Arthur forgoes the art history and the French and makes a beeline to the sign-up sheet for literature. It was never a question, was it?

He makes a note to tell Leon that he chose art history after all because Leon dislikes Arthur still being so hung up on Merlin. God bless Leon's kind heart that never broke into as many pieces as Arthur's; much as the high-school relationship with Morgana had been rough on Leon, he bounced back and started making googly eyes at Morgause by now, judging from his dreamy voice during phone talks with Arthur. Arthur doesn't think it's possible to explain to Leon how no one's eyes are the right shade of blue, and everyone's ears are too small, and everyone's smile is too dull. It's like he wears Merlin-tinted glasses for looking at the world and doesn't know how to take them off and if that's even possible.

Occasionally, Arthur wonders if Merlin and Coach Percival really went and got married and adopted a kid from Cambodia. Several months is not really long enough for all that but for all Arthur knows they continue to head steadily towards those goals.

The thought still hurts just as much as when it first came into his head, always fresh, never fading.

Arthur deliberately doesn't ask himself if his whole bloody life is going to be like that and pushes the hurt down, down, until it's a bit easier to ignore.

* * *

Saturday morning is when they fit the elective in. A couple of Arthur's classmates who also chose literature and managed to drag themselves out of bed so early on a Saturday are dozing, their heads on their folded hands on the desks while they wait for the teacher to come in. The latter is a bit late for whatever reason and Arthur flips through his third copy of _Catcher in the Rye_ \- Christmas present from Mr. Anhora - which he carries around for reading at quieter moments. 

The door jerks open so fast that Arthur's fingers slip from the pages; the book rustles, closing.

"Sorry, I was a bit delayed," the teacher says without looking as he plants his stack of books on the table and hastily straightens up the rolled-up sleeve of his cardigan.

He says something else, too, but Arthur doesn't hear. He cannot breathe, his throat closed up and desert-dry; he can't believe what he's seeing, who he's seeing. All control that Arthur has fought so hard to maintain shatters, Arthur doesn't know anymore where he is, why he is there - there's only Merlin in front of him, dishevelled, sleepy, sheepishly smiling as he looks through his books and notes to find the list of his students' names.

His sight is bliss and torture. Arthur can't move even though the idea to just leg it - and to hell with his continued education in the field of literary works - crosses his mind. There's nothing he wants more than to sit here and absorb the sight and sound of Merlin, intoxicating and painful and wonderful like nothing Arthur has ever experienced before.

Merlin finds the list and looks at it. Arthur knows the precise moment Merlin's eyes get to the bottom of the very short list and find Arthur's name because it's when Merlin shudders - a small but rather violent, full-body shudder - and whips his head up to look.

He looks straight in Arthur's eyes and Arthur looks back.

If Arthur didn't know better, he might think that there was relief and joy in Merlin's eyes when their looks met.

He does know better, though.

"I'm... sorry, professor Emrys," he says quietly. They call teachers professors here, like they are a proper uni instead of a small evening school. "I didn't know it was your course. I'll ask for the art history after all."

He gets up to collect his _Catcher_ and leave but Merlin stops him.

"Wait," he says. He sounds tired and sad and happy and pleading at the same time as if the last few months have been even rougher on him than on Arthur but it's all somehow better now. "You don't have to go. I... I'll be happy to teach you literature again."

"You don't have to," Arthur points out. The awakened classmates watch them talk, not understanding much but not willing to interrupt. "It's not high school anymore. You don't have to be stuck with whoever's thrust in front of you by the curriculum."

"I was never stuck with you." Merlin says, so earnest that Arthur's heart misses a beat. "I know I have no right to say that but... I always cared, I still do."

What a fucking hypocrite you are, Arthur thinks, more tired than angry. The one who spouted a whole speech about never-ever seeing each other again because it's _unhealthy_ for Arthur, and now what? Now it's like the speech never happened?

"I'm still your bloody student," he says out loud. "And you're my bloody literature teacher. I think I've had enough of that for a lifetime. Say hi to Coach Percival for me, by the way."

He grabs the book, shoulders his backpack and makes his way out.

Merlin doesn't stop him.

* * *

After his supposed elective he visits the school office asking for art history instead of literature, pulls a few hours in the library and then goes out for a walk.

Arthur has never felt so alive and so young as tonight while he walks through the winding streets of Caerleon. The hustle and bustle of the big city are by now a familiar background to his thoughts which are all Merlin, Merlin, Merlin. Arthur replays the brief morning encounter in his mind step by step, on endless repeat. 

He doesn't know so much, he longs to meet Merlin again and ask him if his mother is okay, if Merlin went to Caerleon and got himself a part-time job at a shitty evening school because he had no choice due to Father's vicious vindictive streak, if Coach Percival followed him or stayed in Camelot, if, in case Coach stayed, they broke up or decided to try long distance, if Merlin was genuinely glad to see Arthur or just surprised. Many, many lacunas Arthur wants to fill.

Well, they won't have to meet now since the school doesn't give a damn either way about the electives and next Saturday he'll be attending art history. They aren't student and teacher anymore.

They won't have to but they might.

Arthur strokes his phone in his pocket, wondering if he should call Merlin, ask him if he wanted to have coffee - not as potential lovers or even friends, Arthur wouldn't dare, but, well, acquaintances, for the lack of a better word - and talk. Clear the air between them, as much as it's possible for the two of them.

Arthur walks through the night, breathing greedily, with pleasure for the first time in a year.

The world is at his feet, or at least that's how he feels because he knows Merlin is somewhere in the same city, breathing the same air, taking the same subway, looking at the same huge ad boards littering the skyline.

His phone chimes. He snaps it open and reads a text from Merlin's number: "I'm really, really sorry about today. Goodnight, Arthur. M.E."

Arthur smiles. His face is so unused to it that it hurts a bit.

For the first time he can remember, the hurt is good.

All is good and what isn't, will be.

 

_The End_


End file.
